It’s thrilling to be able to inaugurate our new Classical Guitar Sessions video series with a performance by Grammy-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux, who kindly stopped by our studio when he was in the San Francisco Bay Area recently for a concert in the East Bay town of Livermore. Vieaux, who graced the cover of the Summer 2015 issue of Classical Guitar (you can read the interview here), brought his gorgeous-sounding Gernot Wagner guitar and played three pieces: Two movements from J.S. Bach’s Lute Suite No. 1 in E Minor BWV 996 (“Allemande” and “Gigue”), and his wonderful arrangement of a pop standard popularized by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World.”
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Vieuax won his Grammy in 2015 in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his appealingly eclectic CD Play, which included pieces by everyone from Francisco Tárrega and Agustín Barrios to Antônio Carlos Jobim and Duke Ellington. He’s always played music from many eras—he finds nothing unusual in championing both Bach and jazz guitar icon Pat Metheny in the same program. His most recent CD release is a spirited and adventurous duet album with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis called Together. Besides being a consummate guitarist, Vieaux also teaches his craft at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music (in Philadelphia), and has a popular online guitar course through ArtistWorks.