Clusters | guitar solos by Frank A. Wallace

The Dedicatee

I met Adam in Boston through mutual friends and endeavors while I was the Director of the Boston Classical Guitar Society and Festival 21, an annual festival of new music. Unfortunately for me, Adam left on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid and we never had him on the festival. While there he commissioned 30 works for solo guitar from Spanish composers. He has since become a premiere advocate of new music for guitar with several CDs and many collaborations. I am humbled by his energy, focus, power and sumptuous guitar playing. It is with this in mind that I dedicate Clusters to Adam.

Adam’s Biography [excerpt]

Adam Levin has been praised by renowned American guitarist, Eliot Fisk, as a “virtuoso guitarist and a true 21st century renaissance man with the élan, intelligence, charm, tenacity and conviction to change the world.” Levin has performed across the United States and Europe at renowned venues such as Chicago’s Pick Staiger, James Lumber Performing Arts and Mayne Stage concert halls, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, and Jordan Hall, the Palazzo Chigi Saracini in Italy, Berlin’s Universität für Musik und darstellende Künst, Barcelona’s Auditorio Axa, and in Madrid at the Fundación Juan March, Palacio de Godoy, BBVA Palacio del Marqués de Salamanca, and Sala Manuel de Falla. Levin has appeared on a variety of prestigious music series, including Madrid’s Sociedad Española de Guitarra, Conciertos en Palacios and Festival Clásicos en Verano, Valencia’s Amigos de la Guitarra, Boston GuitarFest, L’Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and Festival Pro Música e Cultura in St.Moritz, France.

From 2008-2011, Levin was honored as a Fulbright Scholar as well as grant awards from the Program for Cultural Cooperation Fellowship (promoting cultural understanding between Spain and the United States) and the Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, to research contemporary Spanish guitar repertoire in Madrid, Spain. His three-year residency resulted in a major collaboration with 30 Spanish composers spanning four generations, who each wrote works commissioned by and dedicated to Levin. In 2012, production began on a four volume encyclopedic recording project with Naxos and companion publication Brotons y Mercadal Edicions Musicals, to document these pieces. The first recording in the series, 21st Century Spanish Guitar, Volume 1, was released by Naxos in 2013 to rave reviews, garnering accolades from Classical Guitar Magazine, Soundboard, American Record Guide, and both Recording of the Month and Recording of the Year awards from MusicWeb International, where critic Brian Reinhart wrote, “These composers could not have asked for a better, more thoughtful and dedicated guitarist to premiere their works… one of the most exciting guitar series of the century so far.” For his promotion, interpretation and performance of Spanish music, he was nominated for the 2011 Trujamán Prize, in which only three guitarists worldwide are selected annually.

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