Eliot Fisk

Guitarist Eliot Fisk is known worldwide as a charismatic performer famed for his adventurous, virtuosic and vast repertoire. He is also celebrated for his willingness to take art music into unusual venues (including schools, senior centers, logging camps and prisons). After more than 45 years before the public he remains as his mentor Andres Segovia once wrote, “at the top line of our artistic world.” As the last heir of the great romantic tradition represented by Segovia, Fisk unifies this aesthetic with the best of modernity. He continues to delight and inspire audiences and critics in major concert halls on 5 continents.Fisk’s numerous transcriptions for guitar (often featured on his many award winning recordings) have revolutionized the instrument’s repertoire and include masterpieces from all eras beginning with the Renaissance and continuing to the present day with transcriptions of works by contemporary composers such as Berio, C. Halffter, Corigliano, Rochberg and Beaser. He is particularly known for his transcriptions of the works of Bach (complete solo music for violin, cello, and lute, organ triosonatas, accompanied violin Sonatas etc.) Scarlatti (countless harpsichord Sonatas) Mozart, Haydn, Paganini (complete Caprices for solo violin, Op. 1) as well as for new versions of Spanish repertoire by Albeniz, Granados, Halffter and Falla. He has been the dedicatee of innumerable contemporary works for solo guitar, guitar and orchestra and guitar in various chamber music settings by composers as varied as Luciano Berio, Robert Beaser, Leonardo Balada, Nicholas Maw, Xavier Montsalvatge, George Rochberg, Kurt Schwertsik, and, as illustrated on the present CD, Ralf Gawlick, among many others.
In 2006 Eliot Fisk was awarded the Cruz de Isabel la Catolica by King Juan Carlos of Spain for service to the cause of Spanish music. Earlier recipients of this award included Andres Segovia and Yehudi Menuhin. Eliot Fisk teaches in 5 languages at the Universitaet Mozarteum In Salzburg and at the New England Conservatory in Boston where in 2010 he was named “Teacher of the Year”. His many students have come from all corners of the earth and many have gone on to become prominent performers and educators in their own right.