Now a much loved part of the Australian music scene, the dynamic Australian quartet Guitar Trek was formed in 1987 specifically to launch a guitar family project, which has rapidly attained the status of a major new direction in the guitar’s continuing new development into the 21st century. Guitar Trek are founding member Timothy Kain as well as Ming Le Hoang, Bradley Kunda and Matthew Withers.
With new Australian music at its heart, the group’s fresh, innovative and popular approach to repertoire has taken it across all musical boundaries, breaking the sound barrier between different styles and tastes in the process. The new music of contemporary Australians rubs shoulders with Led Zeppelin, J.S. Bach, music of the Spanish masters, unbuttoned Brahms, the Beatles, the Greats of the Renaissance, George Gershwin, the Gypsy Kings and the sensuous rhythms of modern day Brazil.
Audiences and critics alike have readily acknowledged the outstanding innovative significance of Guitar Trek’s work and the group has been still more highly acclaimed for the extraordinary energy, assurance and musical quality of its playing. “The instruments were played with magnificent sensitivity”, enthused one critic, “and the transcriptions and arrangements were brilliant… As for the players, their individual and collective quality, taken with their imaginative musical leap into the unknown, has given chamber music in Australia a new dimension.”
Guitar Trek’s performing activities has included many tours for Musica Viva, performing in the capital cities as well as the regional centres of Australia, including performances in Musica Viva’s prestigious ‘International Series.’ Other Australian performance highlights include appearances at the Adelaide and Sydney Festivals and the Darwin International Guitar Festival. Guitar Trek’s four compact discs are among ABC Classic’s best sellers. Overseas activities to date include highly successful tours of the USA, Eastern Europe, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.
The Guitar Family
Guitar Trek’s pioneering develop of a unique family of guitars of different sizes – treble, standard, baritone and bass guitars, has opened up an undreamt world of sound and creative possibilities for the guitar. The group’s commitment to these instruments and their use in varying combinations, in an array of stunning new repertoire developed over 14 years, represents a major new direction for the guitar quartet in contemporary chamber music. While the newly developed instruments remain closely related to the standard guitar in design, the resulting four-voiced ensemble has a range of over five octaves, creating a stunning larger than life aural spectrum of all the guitar’s most appealing timbral qualities.
The instruments have all been constructed with the use of Australian maker Greg Smallman’s groundbreaking lattice design, viewed by many as the most important development in guitar construction since Antonio Torres in the 1850′s. The instruments have a striking visual impact, a richness of colour and depth of sound that have captivated audiences world-wide.
Guitar Trek plays standard guitars by Greg Smallman, treble guitars by Eugene Philp and Greg Smallman, and baritone and bass guitars by Graham Caldersmith.
