Kelly Clarkson, Kathy Griffin, and now, the Akins Advanced Guitar Class. What do they all have in common? All have performed in the Long Center, a concert hall that’s hosted numerous artists, theatrical performances, and comedian acts.
On the evening of Sept.13 at the Long Center, Akins High School advanced guitarists were given the privilege of performing before Russian flamenco guitarist, Grisha Goryachev, and in front of a crowd of approximately 1300 people.
“I’ve played in front of many people before, but this was quite the experience,” guitarist Alexis Sepada said. “It felt amazing to perform in front of everyone.”
—–Goryachev is well known for his passionate guitar skills and won “Best Performance of Spanish Music” at the VI International Classical Guitar Competition held in Almería, Spain.
But to prepare for this concert, the advanced guitarists had two weeks notice to learn and become comfortable playing the song they were requested to play, “Palladio” by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.
The ensemble contained not only the Akins advanced guitar class, but also several classical guitar classes from other schools, with a combined group of about 70 students.
For this performance, Travis Marcum, the director of education and outreach for the Austin Classical Guitar Society, conducted the ensemble. Several members of the organization helped to ensure that the group was prepared, which posed a difficult task considering that as a group they had only two rehearsals that lasted two hours each.Given such a short time to rehearse and get familiar with “Palladio” pressured student who are in advance guitar.
“I practiced anytime I could, that was the only thing I focused on,” first year advance guitarist Anastasia Barr said. “It was a difficult song for such an important event, it was either we did well or we didn’t.”
Students managed to play it, but some believe they could’ve done better.
“I feel like we were out of tempo and it frustrates me every time I think about it, we should have been given more time to practice,” Barr said.
