"--astonishing....astounding arrangements" The New York Times

"--virtuosos in their own right, and together produce chamber music proper...close observance of each other's actions...a very tight performance." Fanfare Magazine, referring to Wm. Anderson & pianist Joan Forsyth

"--the alert guitarist"  The New York Times

"--The mirror-paneled recital room provided an apt visual metaphor for how such seemingly modest dimensions can trick the ear into an impression of vaster scale. Guitarist William Anderson brought both technical and expressive virtuosity to his accounts...a quasi-orchestral pallete of coloristic effects...deftly realized by Anderson as he shaped each entry with epigrammatic concentration." Thomas May, The Washington Post

"--Electrifying" New York Times

Events

  • July & August, 2011 concerts

    Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 7:39 PM
    I do picaresque solo guitar programs all summer long, in the U.S. and Europe.  Picaresque?  The guitar is a picaresque instrument.  Andres Segovia made a comment to Mexican composer Manuel Ponce in a well known letter, praising one of Ponce's works, calling it, "picaresque".   Composers joust with musical norms in exactly the same way the picaro (rogue) pushes the ...

Blog

  • Gnosticism, Brokeback Mt. & Suddenly Last Summer

    Thursday, January 12, 2012 - 12:00 AM
    Or.... Love and Death, American Style Someone has to point out the parallels between Brokeback Mountain and Tennesee William's Suddenly Last Summer. Plug: Speaking of Wuorinen's upcoming opera, *Brokeback Mountain*-- The Anderson/Fader Guitar Duo, aka, the Cygnus Guitarists -- will soon release Wuorinen's sterling little guitar duo, *Dodecadactyl* on Furious Artisans Records.  It would make us very happy to ...

  • A Defense of CIA-funded Cold War Musical Research

    Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - 12:41 PM
    Milton Babbitt, a card carrying positivist whose Cold War music was funded by the CIA, wrote somewhere, "if music is to continue to evolve".... A preemptive strike: eugenics was very much in the positivist spirit.  The remark doesn't have to be so insidious.  You can decide.  Babbitt's music evolved, and flowered in the truly transcendental late works.  Babbitt furthered ...

  • Black Swans in the Rest That's Noise

    Sunday, September 18, 2011 - 12:39 PM
    ----Sibelius!---- Alex Ross and Leon Botstein have found an interesting and useful vantagepoint.  It enfolds Bang on a Can, and enlists that effort on its behalf. It is a vantagepoint that works very well with the 50 and over demographic--patrons of the not-youth-music scene.  They are up for serious stuff--one doesn't have to be banging on cans to appeal ...

  • new CD! -- music of F. Brickle

    Friday, August 26, 2011 - 12:03 AM
    Ab nou cor Music of Frank Brickle is the title of my most recent CD with Cygnus. Released by Furious Artisans --> http://furiousartisans.com/catalog/ab-nou-cor-music-of-frank-brickle On Facebook Brickle & I go back over 20 years, and I've been a great fan throughout. I started out admiring the way he would have lovely, prolonged moments of diatonic (good old-fashioned tonal) harmony in ...

  • Eine Gezupfteweltanshauung

    Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 7:36 PM
    Einegezupfteweltanschauung is my collected program notes and notes on major works in the plucked string repertoire. The works has undergone continual revision over the years.  I will outline the most important points here: Rodrigo's Fandango Rodrigo's Aranjuez There are a few points about these two works that deserve to be more widely acknowledged.  These may need multimedia--sound and video--to ...