David Leisner
New Milford, CT- July 18-23 2010: Classical Summit
DAVID LEISNER is an extraordinarily versatile musician with a multi-faceted career
as an electrifying performing artist, a distinguished composer, and a master teacher.
Regarded as one of the world's leading classical guitarists, his superb musicianship and
provocative programming have been applauded by critics and audiences around the
world. He has been acclaimed as "a triple-threat performer" by The New York Times
and a "serious, exploratory and imaginative musician" by The Boston Globe.
Mr. Leisner's career as a guitarist began auspiciously with top prizes in both the 1975
Toronto and 1981 Geneva International Guitar Competitions. In the 1980s, a
disabling hand injury, focal dystonia, interrupted his performing career in mid-stream
and plagued him for 12 years. Through a pioneering approach to technique based on
his understanding of the physical aspects of playing the guitar, Leisner gradually
rehabilitated himself. Now completely recovered, he has once again resumed an active
performing career, earning accolades wherever he plays.
David Leisner's recent seasons have taken him around the US, including his solo debut
with the Atlanta Symphony, a major tour of Australia and New Zealand, and debuts
and reappearances in Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria,
Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, the U.K., Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Puerto Rico and
Mexico. An innovative three-concert series at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall,
included the first all-Bach guitar recital in New York’s history. In the US, he has
appeared on concert series in such notable venues as Boston's Jordan Hall and
Gardner Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, Royce Hall
in Los Angeles, the Folly Theater in Kansas City, St. Francis Auditorium in Santa Fe,
and New York's Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, 92nd St. Y and Symphony Space.
A featured recording artist for Azica Records, Leisner has released 6 highly acclaimed
solo CD’s of music by Bach, Villa-Lobos, Mertz and Schubert, Contemporary
composers, Leisner and Matiegka. A recent release is the Naxos recording of the
Hovhaness with Gerard Schwarz and the Berlin Radio Orchestra. His
collaborations with Boston Symphony Orchestra flutist Fenwick Smith have been
recorded on the Etcetera and Koch labels, with music by Rorem and Pinkham, and his
most recent chamber music recordings of Hovhaness and Haydn are with harpist
Yolanda Kondonassis on Telarc and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival on Koch.
For more information visit DavidLeisner.com
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