Wilder Frets: Classical Guitar in the Wilderness at OSF Greenshow

Name: Wilder Frets: Classical Guitar in the Wilderness at OSF Greenshow
Start: 2026-08-21T18:30:00-07:00
End: 2026-08-21T19:30:00-07:00
Location: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Schedule

Fri Aug 21 2026 at 06:30 pm to 07:30 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Oregon Shakespeare Festival | Ashland, OR

Award-winning classical guitar virtuoso, Tye Austin performs Spanish and Latin American music.
About this Event

ABOUT WILDER FRETS

For our inaugural season, Wilder Frets: Classical Guitar in the Wilderness will tour across the state of Oregon from August 1–October 1, 2026. Led by classical guitar virtuoso and artistic director Tye Austin, the series replaces the traditional concert hall with immersive wilderness landscapes—including state parks, farms, ranches, wineries, hot spring resorts, and other unique locations throughout the state. Audiences experience each performance through wireless headphone technology, allowing them to move freely and explore the surrounding landscape within a quarter-mile radius as the music accompanies their wanderings through each Wilder setting.

ABOUT THIS SITE

Set within Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Greenshow unfolds as an open-air prelude to evening performances, where music, dance, and storytelling bring a festive atmosphere to the garden stage before the main production begins. Framed by tall trees, flowerbeds, and the soft sounds of Ashland Creek, the Greenshow evokes an earlier theatrical tradition, blending Renaissance-inspired performance with the natural beauty of Southern Oregon’s forested canyon landscape. The surrounding region has long been home to the Takelma and Shasta peoples, whose villages and seasonal lifeways were closely connected to the Rogue Valley’s rivers, oak woodlands, and mountain corridors, sustaining deep cultural ties to this land long before the city of Ashland was established. Today, the Greenshow continues as a welcoming gathering place where visitors pause before the theater, sharing in music and community within one of Oregon’s most iconic cultural landscapes.

During Tye Austin’s performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Greenshow, internationally acclaimed glass artist Therman Statom will create a glass sculpture live onstage, transforming molten glass into a luminous work of art in real time as music and fire intertwine in a rare collaboration between two artistic traditions.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Oregon-born classical guitarist and composer Tye Austin, M.M., is the Artistic Director of Wilder Frets, a concert series that brings world-class classical guitar performances into natural wilderness settings. With ancestral ties to Franco-Spanish pirates of the Caribbean, he draws on a deep cultural connection to Spanish and Latin American repertoire, shaping his interpretations with distinctive authenticity and depth. Praised by NBC News for making “the guitar sing like it was invented only to be in his hands,” Austin is an internationally recognized virtuoso guitarist whose career includes appearances at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall, performances for global leaders at the United Nations, and international residencies and tours across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. He was also hired as the principal classical guitarist for Royal Caribbean International cruise lines. He holds a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In his spare time, he can be found surfing, fly-fishing, foraging, or skinny-dipping in geo-thermal hot springs.

Therman Statom (born 1953) is an influential American studio glass artist renowned for transforming sheet, or float, glass into large-scale sculptures and immersive site-specific installations. Born in Winter Haven, Florida, and raised in Washington, D.C., he developed an early passion for art and began studying glass at the Pilchuck Glass School in 1971 before earning degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design and Pratt Institute. While at Pratt, the absence of hot-glass facilities led him to pioneer his distinctive approach of cutting, painting, and assembling sheet glass, often incorporating found objects, sound, and projected imagery. In the early 1980s, he worked with and later directed UCLA’s hot glass program. Widely recognized as a pioneer of contemporary glass art, Statom has expanded the medium beyond traditional craft, creating architectural-scale works that blur the boundaries between sculpture, environment, and public art. Fore more information, visit www.thermanstatom.com

WHAT YOU’LL HEAR

Classical guitar virtuoso Tye Austin will draw from the following programs at each concert, offering a different and unique selection of works for every performance.

SPANISH GUITAR REPERTOIRE

Sebastián Yradier (1809–1865)
La Paloma
Arr. Tye Austin

Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909)
Recuerdos de la Alhambra
Capricho Árabe
Endecha y Oremus

Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909)
Granada
Cádiz
Asturias
Arr. Tye Austin

Enrique Granados (1867–1916)
Danza Española
Arr. Tye Austin

Joaquín Malats (1872–1912)
Serenata Española
Arr. Tye Austin

Anonymous (19th century)
Romanza Española

Manuel de Falla (1876–1946)
Homenaje
Danza del Molinero
Canción del Fuego Fatuo

Miguel Llobet (1878–1938)
El Testament d’Amelia
Cançó del Lladre
El Noi de la Mare

Federico M. Torroba (1891–1982)
Torija
Romance de los Pinos
Madroños

LATIN AMERICAN GUITAR REPERTOIRE

Zequinha de Abreu (1880–1935)
Tico Tico no Fuba
Arr. Tye Austin