February 21, 2008
Just weeks after his Carnegie Hall debut in New York, broadcast live on PBS Television’s “From the Top,” 15-year-old classical guitar prodigy Travis Johnson will solo with the California Symphony under music director Barry Jekowsky at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek on March 9 and 11, 2008. Johnson, who lives in Oregon, will perform Guiliani’s Guitar Concerto, Op. 30 in A Major on an instrument handcrafted specially for him by noted luthier Jeffrey R. Elliott.
In 2005, at the age of only 12, Johnson was suddenly thrust into the international spotlight by winning first place in the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America’s First Annual Youth Solo Guitar Competition. A year later, he was named a Davidson Fellow, received a coveted Jack Kent Cook Scholarship, and became a semi-finalist in Pepperdine University’s Parkening International Youth Solo Guitar Competition.
“It’s very rare to have someone this young so accomplished on classical guitar, and Travis is absolutely remarkable and a virtuoso. There are adults who don’t come close to his artistry. And to be able to play a work as demanding as Giuliani’s guitar concerto is simply extraordinary,” says Jekowsky, who recently conducted Johnson with the Reno Philharmonic, marking his professional orchestral debut.
The March 9 and 11, 2008, program – called “Passion of Movement” – will also feature the award-winning Bay Area flamenco artist Yaelisa dancing to Falla’s Three Cornered Hat Suite No. 2, and the symphony orchestra performing Lou Harrison’s Elegy, to the Memory of Calvin Simmons, written as a tribute to the brilliant young conductor of the Oakland Symphony who died in a boating accident in 1982, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.
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