The New York Guitar Festival ventures uptown for its final installment, in which Leo Kottke headlines a tribute to John Fahey (1939-2001), one of acoustic music's influential innovators and eccentrics; also on the bill are slide guitarist Cindy Cashdollar in a duet with acoustic guitarist/composer Artie Traum, and new-music composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp in a rare acoustic guitar performance. As WNYC's John Schaefer notes, Fahey (pictured) "was an icon to many American guitarists--he put the sound of roots-based American music on the map 25 years before the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack became a surprise hit." Indeed, more than your average folky, Fahey dabbled successfully in blues, Native American music, Indian ragas, and pop. What's more, he experimented with odd guitar tunings, dissonances, and various tape and audio "tricks" in the studio, particularly during the years in which he ran the famed Takoma Records.

Closing out this fall's installment of the New York Guitar Festival are The Romeros, appropriately dubbed the "Royal Family of the Guitar," with an international assortment of music ranging from Telemann and Torroba, to recent pieces by both Celedonio (1913-1996) and Pepe Romero (b. 1944).

About the Artists

Leo Kottke is one of the most influential popular guitarists performing and recording today. Kottke is a self-taught guitarist who now is a member of Guitar Player magazine’s Hall of Fame. Known for his expertise on 12-string guitar, he most often performs solo, but has collaborated to record with such diverse artists as Rickie Lee Jones, Lyle Lovett, the Violent Femmes, and others.

Since the heyday of the Greenwich Village '60s folk scene to the present day, Artie Traum's career has covered nearly every aspect of the music business. From his work as a performer, writer, studio musician, producer, video instructor and clinician, the list of artists with whom Artie Traum has worked with reads like a Who's Who of the music industry. Traum remembers Fahey as one of the first American guitarists to write original non-classical pieces for the guitar. Traum, who was already making records when he first heard Fahey in the mid-1970s, says, "When I heard him on the radio, I had the sense that there was a kindred spirit out there making a living writing and performing instrumental guitar music. It was traditional, but it didn't sound exactly traditional. It was inspirational to a lot of us who were trying to compose for the guitar."

Cindy Cashdollar is fast becoming one of the foremost steel and Dobro players in the country today. As a former member of the Grammy-winning western swing band Asleep At The Wheel, she played road houses and concert halls throughout the country and abroad, has appeared on national TV (including The Tonight Show, Austin City Limits and Nashville Now) and has recorded on numerous albums. She has also been heard playing with Bob Dylan, Leon Redbone, Levon Helm, The Woodstock Mountains Revue, Livingston Taylor, Graham Parker, Paul Butterfield and many others. Although Fahey is not generally known as a slide guitarist, Cashdollar was captivated by the slide guitar and open tunings on Fahey's 1972 album Of Rivers & Religion. As a budding high school guitarist, Cashdollar says she was attracted to "the dark and deep open tunings, which appealed to me more than the 'pretty' folk music of the time. His slide playing isn't what you'd consider very fancy," Cashdollar adds, "but it was so perfect and open."

Elliott Sharp is, like Fahey, musically omnivorous and writes often-challenging material that uses innovative technology. Sharp is known for his electronic music and sound installations, but says his earliest guitar influences were psychedelia and country blues, a continuum into which Fahey fit perfectly. Sharp began playing the piano at six, and soon became intrigued with all types of experimental music, from contemporary classical to free jazz and sophisticated rock. He studied anthropology at Cornell, where he played in a band and took an electronics class with synthesizer inventor Robert Moog. Later, at Bard College he studied with free jazz pioneer Roswell Rudd (future Lounge Lizards John and Evan Lurie were classmates). He went to graduate school in Buffalo, where his academic advisor was Morton Feldman. He moved permanently to New York City in 1979, where he played gigs at various underground performance spaces, including the notorious Mudd Club. In the '80s Sharp became a major figure on the downtown New York experimental music scene, collaborating with many of it's most prominent players, including John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Bobby Previte, and Butch Morris. His music draws upon the wide range of his influences, from Coltrane to Zappa to Xennakis and beyond. Among his recent projects is the blues/hardcore/free jazz hybrid Terraplane, with bassist Dave Hofstra, saxophonist Sam Furnace, and drummer Sim.

Founded by the late and legendary Spanish guitarist Celedonio Romero, The Romeros have become a dynasty of guitar virtuosos, and the quartet now features Celedonio's sons, Pepe Romero and Celin Romero, and grandsons, Lito Romero (Angel's son) and Celino Romero (Celin's son). Their program at the Y spans nearly four centuries, with works by German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian and Argentine composers, including contemporary pieces by both Celedonio (1913-1996) and Pepe Romero (b. 1944). More about the Romeros