Program
Heitor Villa-Lobos - Etudes No. 9 and No. 10, W235

Django Reinhardt - Nuages (Arr. Roland Dyens)

Leo Brouwer - El Decameron Negro

Sebastião Tapajós - Estudio Afro-Samba

Performers
Nathaniel Martinez, guitar
Bruno Panunzio, guitar
Bradly Pupa, guitar
Jon Vivian Sharpe, guitar

Alvaro Pierri was born in Montevideo in Uruguay, in a family of musicians. He received his early musical education from his mother, Ada Estades, on the piano and his aunt, Olga Pierri, on the guitar. Later he studied with Abel Carlevaro, the composer Guido Santorsola and also at the Uruguayan National Institute of Musicology.

From the age of 11 he was already winning prizes in international guitar competitions, including 1st Prize in the International Guitar Competition in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1st Prize in the International Guitar Competition in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the Gold Medal at the 18th International Competition by France Musique/Radio France in Paris.

His manifest love of chamber music has resulted in collaborations with major musical figures including Astor Piazzolla, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Ernö Sebestien, Regis Pasquier, Hatto Beyerle, Philippe Müller, Leo Brouwer, Alcides Lanza, Terry Riley, Tracy Silverman, Maureen Forrester, Eduardo Fernandez, the Cherubini Quartet and the Turtle Island String Quartet, and he has also worked with conductors such as Pinchas Steinberg, Charles Dutoit, Wojciech Rajski, Mario Bernardi and Yannick Nezet-Séguin.

Alvaro Pierri is also an internationally acclaimed teacher. Many of his students have won major international guitar competitions. He was professor at the University of Santa Maria in Brazil and subsequently ran a guitar class at McGill University and the UQAM (Academy of Music) in Montreal. In 2002 he was appointed professor at the famous Academy of music in Vienna (today University of Music and Performing Arts).

Pierri gives master classes at major music festivals such as the New York Manhattan Masters, GFA Guitar Foundation of America, Québec FIG, the SIG Séminaire International de Guitare in Paris and Bordeaux, in Barcelona, at the Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg, the Wiener Meisterkurse, the Villa Musica in Mainz, and in Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, and Hong Kong a. o.