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Jason Vieaux

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Grammy winner Jason Vieaux, “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is the guitarist who goes beyond the classical. NPR describes Vieaux as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy Award-winning album for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, Play.

Vieaux has earned a reputation for putting his expressiveness and virtuosity at the service of a remarkably wide range of music, and his schedule of performing and studio recording commitments is distinguished throughout the U.S. and abroad. His solo recitals have been a feature at every major guitar series in North America and at many of the important guitar festivals in Asia, Australia, Europe, and Mexico.

Jason Vieaux has performed as concerto soloist with more than 100 orchestras, including Cleveland, Toronto, Houston, Nashville, San Diego, Buffalo, Auckland Philharmonia, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Recent performance highlights include debuts at the Domaine Forget International Festival and the Carmel Bach Festival, as well as performances at the Caramoor Festival as Artist-in-Residence, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the National Gallery of Art, Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colon, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, New York’s 92Y, Ravinia Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Curtis Presents, and performances at the Phillips Collection, Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colon, Seoul Arts Center, and Shanghai Concert Hall.

In the last year, Vieaux returned to San Francisco Performances for a solo recital in the Herbst Theatre and to the Ellnora Guitar Festival. He performed at Wolf Trap with the Escher Quartet and gave concerto performances with the New Mexico Philharmonic, New West Symphony, Bakersfield Symphony, and Kentucky Symphony. In a return to live performing in the fall of 2020, the Fort Worth Symphony reengaged Jason Vieaux for four performances of Rodrigo’s Aranjuez concerto.

He has forged his reputation as a first-rate chamber musician and programmer through performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bard Music Festival, Music@Menlo, San Francisco Performances, Cleveland Chamber Music Society, Strings Music Festival, Grand Teton, and many others. Chamber music collaborators include the Escher Quartet; Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; violinists Nigel Armstrong, Anne Akiko Meyers, Kristin Lee, and Tessa Lark; acclaimed harpist Yolanda Kondonassis; and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro.

Vieaux’s passion for new music has fostered premieres of works by Jonathan Leshnoff, Avner Dorman, Dan Visconti, Vivian Fung, Keith Fitch, Kinan Abou-Afach, David Ludwig, Jerod Tate, Eric Sessler, José Luis Merlin, Jeff Beal, Gary Schocker, Mark Mancina, and more. Vieaux recently premiered Visconti’s “Living Language” Guitar Concerto with the California Symphony and has performed the work more than a dozen times since.

Vieaux’s latest CD release, Dance (Azica), with the Escher Quartet, includes works by Boccherini, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Aaron Jay Kernis. His premiere recording of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Guitar Concerto with the Nashville Symphony (Naxos) was also released in 2019. Slated for imminent release is a new solo Bach recording on Azica. Previous albums include Jeff Beal’s “Six Sixteen” Guitar Concerto with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (BIS); Infusion (Azica), a collaboration with bandoneonist Julien Labro featuring the duo’s original arrangements of Leo Brouwer, Piazzolla, Radamés Gnattali, Pat Metheny, and Tears for Fears’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”; Ginastera’s Guitar Sonata, which is featured on Ginastera: One Hundred (Oberlin Music), produced by harpist Yolanda Kondonassis; and Together (Azica), a duo album with Kondonassis. Of his Grammy-winning solo album Play, Soundboard Magazine writes, “If you ever want to give a friend a disc that will cement his or her love for the guitar, this is a perfect candidate,” while Premier Guitar claims, “You’d be hard-pressed to find versions performed with more confidence, better tone, and a more complete understanding of the material.”

Earlier albums include a recording of Astor Piazzolla’s music with Julien Labro and A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra; Bach: Works for Lute, Vol. 1, which ranked highly on Billboard’s Classical Chart after its first week and received rave reviews by Gramophone, The Absolute Sound, and Soundboard; Images of Metheny, featuring music by American jazz legend Pat Metheny (who after hearing this landmark recording declared: “I am flattered to be included in Jason’s musical world”);and Sevilla: The Music of Isaac Albeniz, which made several Top Ten lists the year of its release. Vieaux’s albums and live performances are regularly heard on radio and internet worldwide, and his work is the subject of feature articles in print and online, including such magazines as Acoustic Guitar, MUSO, Gramophone, and on NPR’s “Deceptive Cadence.” Vieaux was the first classical musician to be featured on NPR’s popular “Tiny Desk” series, on which he made a rare repeat performance in 2015 with Yolanda Kondonassis.

In 2012, the Jason Vieaux School of Classical Guitar was launched with ArtistWorks Inc., an unprecedented technological interface that provides one-on-one online study with Vieaux for guitar students around the world. In 2011, he co-founded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music, and in 2015 he was invited to inaugurate the guitar program at the Eastern Music Festival. Vieaux has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1997, heading the guitar department since 2001.

Vieaux is affiliated with Philadelphia’s Astral Artists. In 1992, he was awarded the prestigious GFA International Guitar Competition First Prize, the event’s youngest winner ever. He is also honored with a Naumburg Foundation top prize, a Cleveland Institute of Music Distinguished Alumni Award, and a Salon di Virtuosi Career Grant. In 1995, Vieaux was an Artistic Ambassador of the U.S. to Southeast Asia. His primary teachers were Jeremy Sparks and John Holmquist.

Jason Vieaux is represented by Jonathan Wentworth Associates, Ltd., and plays a 2013 Gernot Wagner guitar with Augustine strings.

For more information, visit jasonvieaux.com.

jason vieaux

Meet the Musicians

FIRST VIOLIN
Carmelo de los Santos
Karen McKinnon Concertmaster Chair
Sarah Tasker •••
Assistant Concertmaster
Ana María Quintero Muñoz
Joan Wang +
Heidi Deifel ++
Juliana Huestis
Barbara Rivers
Nicolle Maniaci
Barbara Scalf Morris

SECOND VIOLIN
Rachel Jacklin •
Carol Swift •••
Julanie Lee
Jessica Retana ++
Liana Austin
Lidija Peno-Kelly
Sheila McLay
Brad Richards

VIOLA
Laura Chang
Kimberly Fredenburgh •••
Allegra Askew
Christine Rancier
Laura Steiner
Michael Anderson
Lisa DiCarlo
Joan Hinterbichler
Laura Campbell

CELLO
Amy Huzjak
Jonathan Flaksman •••

Carla Lehmeier-Tatum
Ian Mayne-Brody
Dana Winograd
David Schepps
Lisa Collins
Elizabeth Purvis

BASS
Mark Tatum •••
Katherine Olszowka
Terry Pruitt
Marco Retana
Frank Murry

FLUTE
Valerie Potter
Esther Fredrickson
Jiyoun Hur ••+
Noah Livingston ••++

PICCOLO
Esther Fredrickson

OBOE
Kevin Vigneau
Amanda Talley

ENGLISH HORN
Melissa Peña ••+
Rebecca Ray ••++

CLARINET
Marianne Shifrin
Lori Lovato •••
Jeffrey Brooks

E-FLAT CLARINET
Lori Lovato

BASS CLARINET
Jeffrey Brooks

BASSOON
Stefanie Przybylska •
Denise Turner

HORN
Peter Erb •+
Allison Tutton
Andrew Meyers
Maria Long ••••

TRUMPET
John Marchiando
Brynn Marchiando
Sam Oatts ••

TROMBONE
Aaron Zalkind
Byron Herrington

BASS TROMBONE
David Tall +
Robinson Schulze ++

TUBA
Richard White

TIMPANI
Micah Harrow •+

PERCUSSION
Jeff Cornelius
Kenneth Dean
Emily Corneliu

Principal •
Associate Principal ••
Assistant Principal •••
Assistant ••••
Leave +
One-year position ++
Half-year position +++