Columns:: Twelve-string guitarist Leo Kottke opens new performing arts season

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Columns::September 17, 2001

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Campus News

Twelve-string guitarist Leo Kottke opens new performing arts season

By Bobby Tyler
btyler@uga.edu

The Performing Arts Center opens the 2001-2002 season this week with performances by Athens native Leo Kottke at 8 p.m. on Sept. 21 and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at 3 p.m. on Sept. 23.
Leo Kottke started out playing the trombone, and in his trademark style he describes the gig that sent him elsewhere--a municipal pancake breakfast in Muskogee, Okla.: “The smell of frying sausages, a whole town’s worth, just beyond the lip of Muskogee’s auditorium stage convinced me that there must be something better beyond trombone.” So he turned to the guitar, relying for guidance on the theory and harmony he had learned on the trombone. “When [the guitar] came along,” he once told an interviewer, “I suddenly belonged to it. I knew I’d be playing the guitar, in some form, for the rest of my life.”
With his 1968 debut album, “Twelve-String Blues,” and his groundbreaking 1969 album, “Six- and Twelve-String Guitar,” Kottke established himself as one of the foremost acoustic guitar soloists in the nation. He has now recorded over 25 albums and has been inducted into Guitar Player Magazine’s Hall of Fame.
Kottke’s music is hard to categorize and might be found in any bin at record stores. The late jazz virtuoso, Joe Pass, when asked which guitarists he enjoyed, mentioned Kottke and said, “I guess you’d have to call it folk.” Kottke himself does not define his own style, preferring to think of himself as a composer for guitar.
Although he has been performing for over three decades, Kottke says, “My first album feels like it happened yesterday. The biggest dream I get is for another tune to come along. That’s what got me here into this in the beginning, and what continues to be the heart of it today.”
For the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert, the ASO’s new music director, Robert Spano, conducts an exciting program he entitles “Heroes,” featuring two all-time favorites: Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, whose main theme was made famous in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s magnificent third symphony, the Eroica.
Spano was appointed last year as the music director of the Grammy-winning Atlanta Symphony. He is considered one of America’s outstanding conductors, acclaimed for producing vital, musically distinguished performances as well as for the breadth of repertoire and consistently imaginative programming. He has conducted nearly every major American orchestra and has been featured on numerous television programs.
A pre-concert lecture will be given by David Zerkel, faculty member in the UGA School of Music. The lecture begins 45 minutes prior to the concert and is free and open to the public.

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