Description
The New York Guitar Festival returns to The Greene Space, WNYC’s ground floor performance venue in Soho, for an action-packed two-part series on Monday and Tuesday, June 12 and 13. #NYGF2023
ABOUT LOUIS CATO:
“Give him an afternoon,” Stephen Colbert once said, “he’ll learn how to play Mozart on a shoehorn.” Best known as the longtime guitarist and now the leader of The Late Show band, Louis Cato also plays drums, trombone, sings, and produces his own solo recordings; he is also a serial collaborator, playing with everyone from A Tribe Called Quest to the Dave Matthews Band. In his spare time he plays still more music in his Instagram series #catocovers.
ABOUT STEVE GUNN:
Spotted in a store window at this year’s Big Ears Festival: a sign reading “Steve Gunn marry me.” Perhaps the writer was a fan of Gunn’s solo acoustic work, influenced by the drones of Eastern music and the Western avant-garde; or the unbridled improvising freedom of his duo work with drummer John Truscinski; or his work with psych-folk band Hiss Golden Messenger or indie rocker Kurt Vile. Gunn’s appearance at Big Ears playing trad folk songs with Jake Xerxes Fussell was just one side of this multifaceted guitarslinger.
ABOUT JIJI:
Jiyeon Kim, the South Korean guitarist known professionally as Jiji, first gained acclaim as a classical guitarist. But she is also a virtuoso electric guitarist, and has commissioned and premiered works by numerous contemporary composers for both forms of the instrument. She is also a composer herself, and a self-professed fan of “weird sounds on Ableton,” the music software program. The Washington Post called her “one of the 21 composers/performers who sound like tomorrow.”
ABOUT SESSA:
Brazilian singer/songwriter Sessa (born Sergio Sayeg in Sao Paolo) is heir to the great tradition of MPB – Brazilian popular music, in the vein of Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso. But he favors a stripped down approach that reflects his own love of the German minimalist group Cluster, and his lyrics – often about love, heartbreak, and the power of music – echo themes in Leonard Cohen’s songs and Sun Ra’s cosmic jazz. His latest album is Estrela Acesa, or “Burning Star.”