DIRECTIONS: St Francis Episcopal Church
Guitar Virtuoso Alan Mearns in concert
with a Prelude performance by Meezahn Kemal
Known for years for performances of his original art songs, Alan Mearns more recently gained recognition for his inspiring transcriptions of core works of the classical guitar repertoire. Weaving intricate internal voices and harmonies into the original scores, Mearns performs his transcriptions with extraordinary skill.
Guitar virtuoso René Izquierdo says of Mearns, “If you think you’ve heard Bach on the guitar, think again!” Likewise, Mark Delpriora of The Juilliard School adds that while Godowsky, Busoni, Leonhardt, and others produced widely performed Bach transcriptions, the music world should recognize Bach-Mearns, “for no transcription of Bach deserves a hyphen more than Mearns’s guitar transcriptions.”
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Alan Mearns began musical studies on the violin at age five, switching to the guitar at ten. After moving to the U.S. in his late teens, Mearns studied guitar with Douglas James at Appalachian State University under the prestigious Fletcher Scholarship and with Stanley Yates at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn.
Mearns’s November 2 performance marks his South Bay Guitar Society debut, an event that guitar enthusiasts will not want to miss. For a preview of Mearns’s inventive rendering of Bach, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp98MRKrs2U
Prelude performer Meezahn Kemal
John Dowland: My Lady Hunsdon's Allemande (Poulton 54)
Dušan Bogdanović: Secrets Nos. 3 and 7
J.K. Mertz: Nocturne Op. 4 No. 1
Meezahn Kemal, age 15, has performed in numerous recitals, including at the 2024 Summer Guitar Workshop at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied both solo and ensemble repertoire under David Tanenbaum, Marc Teicholz, and Meng Su. Meezahn has been a student for six years under Bradly Pupa at the California Conservatory of Music. Outside the guitar, Meezahn is a high-school sophomore in Redwood City and has sung in his school choir and been on his school’s cross-country and track teams.
