Sunday April 27th, 2008: Acoustic Eidolon with Thomas Loefke

$20/18

Fate has a magical way of bringing people together. Take the case of Joe Scott and Hannah Alkire, aka Acoustic Eidolon. In 1995, Hannah, a studio cellist, received a call to play on a Boulder ensemble's record. As they gave Hannah directions to the recording studio, she grew more incredulous as they brought her up the small road near her and turned down her street! Little did she know that across the street and three houses away lived the greatest double-neck guitjo player in the world (ok, the only double-neck guitjo player in the world). And their paths had officially crossed. At age 23, Joe decided to attend the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, CA. There he studied all styles of acoustic and electric guitar. During this same time period, he started experimenting with different ways of stringing the acoustic guitar. One of the ideas was based on stringing the standard 6-string acoustic like a 5-string banjo. This was an idea that Joe's father had suggested years earlier. With this stringing, he discovered that he could play all his same banjo licks, but on the acoustic guitar it created a whole new sound. This was the beginning of the Guitjo.
Joe and Hannah will be joined by Celtic harpist, Thomas Loefke, of Norland Wind fame. Since 1984 Thomas has developed his own performing and musical style, and has toured across Europe, Canada and the USA. He has received numerous international prizes, including first prize at the O'Carolan Harp Festival in 1987. Since that year he has been working together with Scottish guitarist/composer Ian Melrose. Both represented Germany at the European Broadcasting Union Festival in Norway in 1989. Thomas' first album, 1992's "New Music for Celtic Harp", was a collection of tunes written during his first seven years of composing, interspersed with a few of Ian's compositions.

website : www.acousticeidolon.com