About this Event
Celebrate the Jack Kerouac centenary with the premiere of David Amram’s new Kerouac song, “Ah…Let’s Go Back to the Village,” commissioned for The Village Trip.
Tilted Axes – twenty electric guitars – kick off this unique guitar extravaganza. There follows a program of South American guitar music, and twenty classical guitarists wrap up, joining David Amram, who will jam on his Beat jazz standard, “Pull My Daisy.”
David Amram and his great friend Jack Kerouac caroused the Village in the 1950s and 60s. Amram – a living legend well known for his lush film scores for Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass and Frankenheimer’s Manchurian Candidate – worked with Joseph Papp, and was Leonard Bernstein’s first composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic.
At GuitarFest: Ah…Let’s go Back to the Village, Amram is part of an international contingent of composers setting poems by Village poets: Reyes Oteo, from Malaga, Spain, sets poetry by Gamel Woolsey, who lived on Patchin Place in the 1920s and went on to spend many years near Malaga, where she is buried in the English cemetery. Israeli guitarist-composer Akiva Daniel sets poems by Masha Kaleko, who lived on Minetta Street. Kaléko was twice a refugee, first from World War One, when her family fled Poland for Berlin. There she was a successful poet, published in German newspapers, until the Nazis forced her out of Germany.
Village Poets: Jack Kerouac, Masha, Kaléko, Louis Zukofsky, Gamel Woolsey, Djuana Barnes
Village Composers: David Amram, David Glaser, Harold Meltzer, Gene Pritsker, Elie Yarden, Victoria Bond, William Anderson
And works by Gary Philo, Frank Brickle, Reyes Oteo, Daniele Akiva, Klaus Ager, Damon Ferrante, William Anderson, Mark Delpriora, Richard Festinger, Richard Cameron Wolfe.
Guitarists
- Tilted Axes, Patrick Grant, Director
- Sharon Harms, soprano
- Elizabeth Farnum, soprano
- Juanjo Guillem, percussion
The Village Guitar Orchestra, William Anderson, conductor
Members: Oren Fader, Dan Lippel, Daniel Conant, Austin Tobia, Kevin Gallagher, John Chang, Adam Negrin, Valentina Savu, Federico Diaz, Noam Beili, Peter Argondizza, Liz Hogg, Lars Frandsen, Edison Pereira, Kyle Miller, Katherine Perleman, Alex DeSalvo, Diego Andrade, Jack Ward, Steven Sabet, Loren Fortna, David Chidsey, and Joseph Parisi.
4 to 5:30pm: Music of the Americas
With Tilted Axes, directed by Patrick Grant; the Ringston-Ward Duo, featuring flutist Jessica Ringston, with guitarist Jack Ward; The Bothe-Zehner Duo, with soprano Theresia Bothe and guitarist Yvonne Zehner; and guitar orchestra Sheer Pluck!
Featuring guitars soloists Yvonne Zehner, Kevin Gallagher, Noam Beili, Daniel Conant, Edison Pereyra, Liz Hogg, Peter Argondizza, and Michael Vascones, Gene Pritsker, William Anderson
And works by Barrios, Villa-Lobos, Gene Pritsker and William Anderson, Leo Brouwer, Jorge Cardoso.
6 to 7:30pm: Global Greenwich Village
With electric guitar quartet Bodies Electric, and David Claman’s Ghostbusters.
Soprano Sharon Harms and percussionist Juanjo Guillem join the guitarists for new works by Austria’s Klaus Ager and Spain’s Reyes Oteo.
Plus guitar music for one to four guitars by Richard Camerion-Wolfe, Damon Ferrante, Gary Philo and Frank Oteri and others – and a grand finale by guitar orchestra Sheer Pluck!
8 to 9:30pm: Ah… Let’s Go Back to the Village
The premiere David Amram’s Jack Kerouac setting “Ah… Let’s Go Back to the Village,” commissioned for Vox n Plux by the Roger Shapiro Fund for The Village Trip 2022.
We will also hear the premiere of a new work by Daniel Akiva, plus compositions by Carlos Fariñas, Frank Brickle, and William Anderson.
Featuring Vox n Plux; soprano Elizabeth Farnum; guitarists William Anderson and Oren Fader; The Bothe-Zehner Duo; guitarist Yvonne Zehner, and guitar orchestra Sheer Pluck!
Concert-goers should feel free to come and go during the day on the same ticket but please respect both performers and audience.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St John's in the Village, 218 West 11th Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 20.00