Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009

Guitarist offers eclectic show Michael Nicolella will perform rock, jazz and classical music Tuesday at Legacy Hall

Does Columbus State University guitar professor Andrew Zohn know every premier guitarist in the world?

Maybe. He seems to invite a lot of them to Columbus.

“The guitar community is pretty small,” said guitarist and composer Michael Nicolella. “We probably met doing competitions. I don’t remember when I first met Andrew.”

As for Zohn, he simply calls Nicolella “the best.”

Nicolella will make his first trip to Columbus this weekend.

He was commissioned to write “La Vals Eturna” for the CSU student guitar ensemble, which he sent to Zohn around New Year’s.

The students have been rehearsing the piece and Nicolella will coach them Saturday and Sunday for Monday’s concert at Legacy Hall.

Nicolella will be conducting the nine-minute composition.

Then on Tuesday, he will be presenting a solo concert at Legacy Hall.

The concert will include some of his original works, contemporary composers like Jacob ter Veldhuis and standard classical repertoire. He also has a set of music featuring electric guitar.

“It’s a really eclectic program,” Nicolella said. “So I go from Scarlatti to (Jimi) Hendrix.”

Nicolella began playing guitar when he was 11 and about a year later, he was attracting young groupies as he played in a rock band.

As he grew older, he jumped from musical genres between rock, jazz and classical music.

“I just had a voracious appetite for guitar,” Nicolella said.

He first enrolled as a jazz guitar major in the Berklee School of Music.

Midway through his undergraduate degree, he switched to classical guitar, which he had taught himself as a teenager.

For his master’s degree, he went to Yale University as a classical guitar major.

After he graduated, he taught in Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisc., and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee.

Today, he teaches mostly privately. Nicolella says he’s basically a concert guitarist, though he does teach some master classes.

Right now, he’s composing music for his next CD.