Happy Valley Guitar Orchestra
Saturday, May 21, 7:00pm
Tickets: $15-$30 sliding scale
Advance tickets available here!
The Happy Valley Guitar Orchestra is an avant-garde community music ensemble made up of 16 electric, acoustic, classical and bass guitars led by Artistic Director Joseph Ricker who creates the innovative arrangements which form their repertoire - a body of music that is as unusual and revelatory as the ensemble itself. The orchestra is populated by both amateur and professional musicians from the local community brought together by their passion for the guitar and for exploring an array of music which no other single ensemble can encompass. For this performance, the HVGO will be joined by NYC/Northampton based drummer Richie Barshay.
In a typically varied program, the HVGO will perform music ranging from G.F Handel's Sarabande in D minor to a selection from Stereolab's 1997 art-pop masterpiece "Dots and Loops" along with a generous helping of music with ties to Spain. As a classical guitarist, HVGO Artistic Director Joseph Ricker has formed a deep love for the music of Spain which is, after all, the birthplace of the guitar. Ricker notes "Whether it is the intimate piano compositions of my favorite composer, the Catalan modernist Federico Mompou, the "Danzas Españolas" of the Romantic national composer Enrique Granados or the "Canciones Antiguas Españolas" collected and arranged by none other than Spain's great poet Federico Garcia Lorca, the music of Spain always has a home on the guitar."
"What is really interesting about the HVGO" says Ricker, who was appointed HVGO's Artistic Director in 2018, "is not so much that it is an orchestra of guitars, but that it is an orchestra of guitarists. This room full of all different kinds of guitarists is kind of like the island of misfit toys. We come together from so many different beautiful musical traditions and I never know how it's going to work out, but it somehow always does."
Part garage band, part formal large ensemble, the Happy Valley Guitar Orchestra was founded in 2009 by arch-guitarist Peter Blanchette, whose innovative spirit and uncompromising artistry was an inspiration to the current director. Since that time the HVGO has been thrilling and surprising audiences at annual performances with the Northampton Center for the Arts, First Night Northampton, and many other regional venues, and as far afield as Jordan Hall in Boston.