Moe Staiano Conducts Music for 48 Guitars (24 Guitar Version)

Moe Staiano conducts his electric guitar ensemble with the premiere of Music for 48 Guitars (24 guitar version). This is an exploration of tonal interplay and contrasting rhythms with eight electric guitars, bass, drums, and percussion. It features assertive rhythmic structures and intertwining tremolo structures, balanced by continuous play against each guitarist with bouncing rhythms and ongoing hockets while surrounding the audience with a bombastic attack.

Written at the start of 2022 and completed in 2023, Music for 48 Guitars follows his first guitar composition, Away Towards the Light (2016), but with a vision of encompassing the audience of the ensemble with various stations of players circling the audience with a live surround sound of music sections traveling back and forth. There are six (6) groupings of eight (8) guitar players each (four (4) each in this case for this performance), spread out equally in the room, with five percussionists playing toms, cymbals, bongos, brake drums, and tam-tam, and one drummer and bassist. The lack of venues with the space and accommodation to house a hefty ensemble of 55 players has (and continues to) delay any performance. The truncated ensemble of 31 players will be the first performance of any kind at the Dresher Ensemble Studio. The performance will conclude my 2019 Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency that was interrupted due to COVID.

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