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Andrew York (b. 1958)
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is impossible to classify. Formed
in the mid-1980s by four guitar students at the University of
Southern California, their repertoire has developed over the
last twenty years from respectful adaptations of the classical
Spanish guitar repertoire into a provocative brew that ranges
from Rodrigo to Led Zeppelin, from Bach to Count Basie, and
from the purely acoustic renderings of Manuel de Falla to exuberant
Indonesian Gamelan, Celtic reels, and African polyrhythms.
One of the main reasons for this eclecticism is the presence
of Andrew York. This spiky virtuoso joined the group full time
in 1989, when one of the original members began to find the
discipline of endless touring impossible to sustain. Already
by then a veteran of jazz, fusion, funk, grunge, and garage,
York was a master of the Elizabethan lute as well as classical
Spanish guitar. The presence of his highly original and assertive
voice changed and enriched the texture of the LAGQ, and his
restless musical spirit led the group to new areas of exploration
and experiment.
Andrew York was born in 1958 in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up
in Virginia. His family was musical. His mother and sisters
were all singers, and his guitar-playing father loved to jam
with friends and family. The house, as York says, was “awash
with melody.” He doesn’t remember when a guitar was first put
in his hands, but by the age of eight he was taking lessons
in classical guitar. By the age of ten, he began to compose.
He attended James Madison University where he received a Bachelor
of Music degree in Classical Guitar Performance in 1980. He
completed his Master of Music degree at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles in 1986. Throughout this period of
intensely disciplined study and practice, York was extending
the range of his interests and skills into other musical fields.
He learned to improvise by playing jazz, and he learned to assert
himself by playing various forms of rock. His original intentions
in traveling west were to extend himself as a jazz-based improviser,
and to learn the discipline of studio performance. He joined
hand-bell choirs and took the fiendishly difficult lute into
realms undreamed of by Dowland and Byrd. And he composed. “I
always wanted to make new music,” he says. “Some people don’t
have that push. For me, it was always a natural desire.”
Unlike the other members of the LAGQ, York does not teach. For
those who wish to learn from him, he has recorded the two-volume
set Jazz Guitar for Classical Cats. A third volume on
improvisation is in the works.. As well as composing, he has
a flourishing solo career outside the group. His 1994 album
Denouement featured twenty-five of his original compositions
for nylon-stringed guitar and won Guitar Player magazine’s “Best
Classical Album” award for that year. Perfect Sky (2000)
has nine more original solos, as well as a transcription of
a harpsichord piece by Couperin and very personal takes on themes
from Pinocchio to Peanuts.
York has published a wide range or works. Classical guitarist
John Williams regularly performs York’s original compositions
from Perfect Sky, and his arrangement Selections from
the Nutcracker Suite for two classical guitars is recognized
as a masterpiece of guitar transcription.
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