To call it a “jam” doesn’t do it justice. “Collaboration” comes up short. Even “supergroup” seems not to be sufficiently superlative. When the CGT and the MG3 join forces, it’s an experience that can only be called “a six-by-6 string phenomensemble.”
CGT stands for California Guitar Trio, one of the most fanatically followed groups of instrumental adventurers in existence — and the missing link between Beethoven and Burl Ives, Franz Schubert and Freddie Mercury, or Vivaldi and The Ventures.
MG3 means The Montréal Guitare Trio, a threesome of modern masters who’ve wowed audiences from major European festivals to BB King’s in NYC with their heartwarming stage presence and their spine-chilling virtuosity.
While they may have found themselves joined together in musical matrimony (a union in which the only argument generally centers around settle strings vs. nylon), the members of CGT and MG3 have created an entity that’s more than a marriage of convenience — touring the planet, sharing the stage and releasing a live album in 2011. On the evening of Sunday, October 14, the supercharged sextet comes to Monmouth University for a concert event that takes the “acoustic” guitar into dynamic dimensions that many people never thought possible.
The 7 p.m. show marks a return to the Pollak Theatre for California Guitar Trio (Utah native Paul Richards, Belgian-born Bert Lams, Tokyo-based Hideyo Moriya) who visited the Monmouth campus in the 1990s as members of King Crimson founder Robert Fripp’s touring League of Crafty Guitarists. As CGT, the three veterans of the British guitar guru’s Guitar Craft program have released fourteen studio and live albums, filmed a tour documentary and carried their music across international borders as easily as they’ve broken through the barricades of musical genre.
Making their first area appearance are the members of The Montréal Guitare Trio (Sébastien Dufour, Glenn Lévesque, Marc Morin), all of whom have made a name for themselves beyond their native Quebec — covering classic rock songs from The Beatles and others; folding stylistic influences from Scandinavia to South America into their original compositions, and bringing more than just “one more country” to the multinational mix.
Audiences should expect nothing less than the unexpected when CGT+MG3 take the stage — a set of intricately wrought surprises that can take in everything from baroque fugues, surf music (Dick Dale’s “Misirlou”), arena rock (Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”) and bluegrass picking with some interlocking mathematical-puzzle originals. It’s a brand of subtle pyrotechnics that “skips merrily among genres” with wry showmanship and genuinely awesome technique — one of those off-the-map crossroads where the happiest of accidents occur.
To purchase tickets, or for additional information on the new Performing Arts season, please contact the Monmouth University Performing Arts Box Office at 732-263-6889, or online at www.monmouth.edu/arts. To schedule an interview, please contact Eileen Chapman at 732-571-3512.
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Media contact: Petra Ludwig at 732-263-5507