Artists & Core Faculty
Bill Kanengiser
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Bill Kanengiser brings to the Festival his many gifts. He has been teaching at the USC Thornton School of Music since 1983. He has given master classes around the world and produced two instructional videos. A prolific arranger, he has created dozens of transcriptions for solo guitar and guitar quartet, and composed a number of works for four guitars. In 2009 he created the stage production “The Illustrious Gentleman Don Quixote” for narrator and guitar quartet, writing the stage script and adapting music from the Spanish Renaissance. It was premiered with Monty Python member John Cleese, and extensively toured with Firesign Theater founder Phil Proctor.
Kanengiser is a founding member of the Grammy winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. He has given hundreds of recitals and concerto appearances around the world, and has recorded over a dozen releases. Their Telarc release “LAGQ Latin” was nominated for a GRAMMY®, and it was their Telarc title “LAGQ’S Guitar Heroes” which won a GRAMMY® in 2005 as the best classical crossover recording. Most recently, their recording of the title work on Pat Metheny’s “Road to the Sun” hit #1 on the Apple Music Classical chart.
An active proponent of new music, he recently received a grant from the Augustine Foundation for his “Diaspora Project,” commissioning seven new works focusing on issues of migration and assimilation. It includes new pieces by Sergio Assad, Dusan Bogdanovic, Golfam Khayam, and others. An advocate for musicians, wellness, he serves as Chair of the Thornton Musician’s Wellness Committee, curating their Wellness Initiative with health screenings and a lecture series, as well as creating a Musician’s Wellness course.
Bokyung Byun
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Bokyung Byun has joined University of North Texas (UNT) as Assistant Professor of Guitar. She brings our festival a great understanding of both solo and collaborative performance. The UNT College of Music quotes her website: “A bevy of orchestras, festivals, workshops, and guitar societies look to Byun for solo performances and masterclasses. In recent seasons, Byun has performed as a soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, West Los Angeles Symphony, New Juilliard Ensemble, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, among others. Her solo recital highlights include performances at the Kumho Young Artist Series, Philadelphia Guitar Festival, Aspen-Salida Concert Series, Toronto Guitar Weekend, Guitar Montréal, Ellnora | The Guitar Festival, and San Diego Guitar Festival.”
From her bio: She is committed to expanding the role of a 21st-century musician. Her concert program often features contemporary music alongside traditional repertoire. “It’s vital and exciting to audiences for concerts to join the new with the old. For guitar music to continue to grow, I believe that new works must actively be cultivated in programming, and it is my hope that audiences leave my performances with new experiences.”
This skill at navigating both classic repertoire and fresh work has led her to co-found Sounding Board: The New Music Initiative for Guitarists and Composers. The project focuses on promoting collaborative relationships between composers and performers to create new works for guitar, and its inaugural festival in Besançon, France in 2019 has been praised as “extraordinary, in the strict sense of the word,” by La Presse de Gray in France.
She entered The Juilliard School at the age of sixteen. She holds Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California. Teachers and mentors include Scott Tennant, William Kanengiser, Chen Zhi, Tae-Soo Kim, and Sharon Isbin.
— Core Faculty —
Jay Kacherski – Artistic Director
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Virtuosismo" and "technical dominance" are the words used by the press to describe American guitarist, Jay Kacherski. A native of New York, Kacherski has performed around the world as a soloist and member of the Grammy-nominated Texas Guitar Quartet. He has appeared at distinguished music festivals and venues such as the Festival International de Guitarra de Taxco, Mexico, the Florida Guitar Foundation, the Brevard Music Center, Round Top, the New Orleans International Guitar Festival, the Austin Classical Guitar Society, and the International Guitar Art Festival in Shenzhen, China. He also collaborated with Grammy-winners and nominees such as the chamber choir Conspirare, Chilean flutist Viviana Guzman, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and renowned composer Libby Larsen.
Kacherski spent two years in Mexico as a Fulbright Scholar and member of the guitar faculty at the Escuela Nacional de Música, the music conservatory for the National University of Mexico (UNAM) researching, performing, and promoting contemporary classical guitar music of Mexico. His guide and teacher was world-renowned Mexican guitarist, Dr. Juan Carlos Laguna. Kacherski has since premiered and recorded many new works from Mexico and has created a complete catalog of Mexican guitar works with links to videos, audio, scores, and more that can be found at www.kacherskiguitar.com.
His debut solo album, Synthesis: 20th & 21st Century Guitar Music from Mexico, was the culmination of his Fulbright work. The recording, on the Frameworks Records label, has been hailed by Soundboard magazine as a “…brilliant album” and “one of the finest guitar solo recordings of recent years”. His latest recording, Landscapes, with Brazilian pianist Lina Morita, also on the Frameworks Records label, is an album of new works for piano and guitar duo by award winning composers: Jefferson Todd Frazier, Olga Amelkina-Vera, Luciana Bigazzi and Maurizio Colonna among others. The duo recently commissioned a new work by the celebrated Brazilian-American composer, Clarice Asaad, that will be premiered in 2024.
Kacherski is currently on the guitar faculty at Loyola University of New Orleans, the University of New Orleans, and McNeese State University.
He is Artistic Director of the 6-day Houston Classical Guitar Festival & Competition and the Loyola Guitar Festival in New Orleans as well as the Director of the Francis G. Bulber Youth Orchestra Guitar Program.
Kacherski’s academic studies include a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master of Music in Guitar Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music and undergraduate degrees from Florida Southern College where he graduated with honors.
kacherskiguitar.com
Jeremy Garcia – Associate Artistic Director
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Jeremy García is a classical and flamenco guitarist, award winning composer, educator and recording artist.
His latest album, Nuevo Día, (Frameworks Records label 2023) was praised by critic Jim McCutcheon: “A refreshing take on some old standards and an excursion into contemporary flamenco-based guitar…García’s performance is spirited, accentuated by flamenco techniques including golpes and rasgueados, and played with a quasi-improvisatory, wild flamenco disposition that at no time disrespects the original music.” (American Record Guide, Nov-Dec 2023). Other albums include García y Reyna’s Baile del Sol and Café Khytaro’s Distancia.
Noted for dazzling performances throughout the United States, Garcia collaborated with the Houston Grand Opera accompanying soprano Ana María Martinez and flamenco dancers in HGO’s Suite Española (2021). He has been a soloist with the Brazosport Symphony and the Grace Symphony Orchestra. García and Irma La Paloma co-founded Solero Flamenco, Houston’s premier flamenco performance company. He is featured guitarist, and they tour nationally in Candlelight Concerts by Fever. He was recently honored to perform for Queen Sofía of Spain and guests at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Gala 2023.
A noted composer, García’s work, Zalamera Colombiana won the top prize in the Flamenco Composition category at the 2023 Séptimo Concurso de Composición para Guitarra Fidelio, in Madrid, Spain. Composers representing Spain, Colombia, France and the USA competed for this high honor. His original work Suite Andaluz debuted with the Helena Symphony in Montana where he also performed Joaquín Rodrigo's El Concierto de Aranjuez (2017).
He is Associate Artistic Director of the 6-day Houston Classical Guitar Festival & Competition and is often invited as a guest artist to numerous festivals, where he gives concerts, master classes, workshops on technique and composition and conducts guitar ensembles. García and La Paloma co-founded and directed the Houston Spanish and Flamenco Festival (2011-2016) with funding from Texas Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
García is Affiliate Professor of Guitar at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music. For 20 years he was Director of Guitar Studies at San Jacinto College where he also conducted an award-winning ensemble. He gives private lessons in both classical and flamenco guitar in the USA and abroad. García earned a Bachelor of Music in Classical Guitar Performance from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi and Master of Music from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
jeremygarcia.net
Eddie Healy – Education
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Eddie Healy serves on the Board of Gulf Coast Guitar Association as Education Director of the Houston Classical Guitar Festival & Competition. A prolific composer and concert guitarist, Healy has performed in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. In Mexico he was featured at the 19th Annual International Guitar Festival of Morelia, the 4th Festival Internacional de Guitarra Ramón Noble, and annually in Spain at the ChamberArt Madrid Festival. He and his duet partner, Dr. Brandi Estwick, serve as faculty for the festival.
His original compositions have been performed by many artists throughout the world and can be heard on his CD, Direction. He has composed the theme to a series of podcasts produced by The University of Texas at Dallas titled “A Conversation With…”, the theme for the Arts-Based Learning for Business video series, scores for several video games, commercials, and the alma mater for Rogers Middle School in Prosper, Texas. In 2012 Healy released a CD consisting exclusively of his compositions titled, Direction. James Scott of minor7th.com said that the recording “…is a triumph, offering the listener accessible compositions matched by immaculate performances.” He published the sheet music for several of the compositions from Direction with Joachim-Trekel of Hamburg, Germany in 2010 and has 13 publications with Les Productions d’OZ to date.
In addition to his significant output as a composer Eddie has also done a great deal of arranging. He has arranged many pieces for voice and guitar, voice and guitar ensemble, and two voices and guitar ensemble. Most of them have been premiered by Healy and Dr. Estwick.
Healy is a faculty member at Dallas College and teaches at the Gray School of Music. Healy is the Assistant Director of the Texas International Guitar Competition & Festival as well as that festival’s youth competition.
He received a Bachelor’s in classical guitar performance at The University of North Texas and completed his Master of Music degree from Southern Methodist University.
www.eddiehealy.com
Andrea Ricci Cannon – Outreach
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Andrea Cannon is a performer proficient in classical and jazz guitar. An alumna of Berklee College of Music, she studied Jazz Guitar Performance and also received an Outstanding Alumni Service Award. Post-Collegiate studies include Applied Performance in Classical Guitar with Robert Guthrie of Southern Methodist University.
Cannon directs Guitar Arts Pre-Collegiate Studio in Houston and is a jazz consultant to Spring Texas School District. She formerly directed applied guitar studies at Lone Star College-North Harris County. Her students have received awards for classical performance in competitions through Music Teachers National Association, Eastfield College, University of Texas-Dallas, the Brownsville Guitar Ensemble Festival, Houston Young Artists Concerts and the Guitar Foundation of America Ensemble Showcase. Jazz students have been selected to Region Jazz Ensemble and showcased twice at Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic.
She travels internationally as a clinician and performer in Europe, Central and South America as well as cities throughout the USA and Canada. Cannon has been published in the American Suzuki Journal, Soundboard Magazine and American Music Teacher. She is certified through the Music Teachers National Association and is a Registered Teacher Trainer with the Suzuki Association.
The arts advocacy group Alarte of Guatemala City, Guatemala has created a scholarship in her name. The first recipient of the 'Beca Andrea Cannon' is enjoying the benefits of a new guitar as well as expert Suzuki instruction.
As Outreach Director of the Board of Directors of Houston Classical Guitar Festival & Competition, Cannon is responsible for augmenting guitar programs in the public schools and for sending our guitarists to perform in retirement communities and hospitals.
andreacannon.com