Wildly enthusiastic overflow audiences were treated to electrifying performances of new and newly arranged flute-guitar duo music by internationally-acclaimed artists Viviana Guzmán and Jérémy Jouve for theSouth Bay Guitar Society in San Jose, CA, June 22-24, 2011.
Jérémy flew in from Paris to join Viviana for a recording session at world-famous Skywalker Sound in Marin. These concerts, as well as a live radio performance on KKUP 91.5 FM Jewels and Binoculars with Gaylord Fischer, were in preparation for their recording. If you missed it, don’t despair: the CD will be issued early next year!
Viviana introduced the pieces with good-natured banter about Jérémy’s selection of French composers of Spanish music. At one point, in answering an audience question about his Rodrigo recordings, Jérémy started playing the beginning of Concerto de Aranjuez. Viviana spontaneously joined him and they played together wonderfully for a few minutes before (regrettably) stopping to captivated audience applause.
Their programme was notable for fresh additions to the flute-guitar duo repertoire, starting with a beautiful arrangement by Jérémy of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Viviana delighted in telling the audience how Jérémy meticulously hand-wrote the score, shrunk each page to 1/8 size, and carefully taped them together, barely fitting on a 4-foot-wide stand, allowing him to play without page turns while demonstrating his amazing eyesight.
They performed two new works for flute and guitar: Traveling Sonata, by Roland Dyens, and Sonatine, by Atanas Ourkouzounov (b. 1971) — exhilarating works with complex rhythms and strange constantly changing time signatures. Each work was completed with Viviana’s radiant smile complementing Jérémy’s quiet joy. These concerts were simply thrilling.