Flash concerts continue with jazz guitarist in New Commons

Bates’ new “Flash Concerts” series continues with a performance by jazz guitarist Sean McGowan around noon Tuesday, Sept. 20, in the Fireplace Lounge, New Commons, 136 Central Ave.

As the Olin Arts Center celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, the Olin Concert Hall has instituted this new music series to stand alongside the college’s long-running Noonday Concerts. Flash concerts provide a more casual experience, with events popping up at diverse locations and unexpected times.

Meanwhile, the next traditional Noonday entry takes place at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, in the Olin Concert Hall, as Sylvia Berry performs works by J.C. Bach and Mozart on a fortepiano built by Rod Regier of Freeport.

All these concerts are open to the public at no charge. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Maine native McGowan combines diverse influences and unconventional techniques to create a broad palette of textures for solo fingerstyle guitar. His first recording, the self-produced River Coffee, won the 2002 Best Independent Release of the Year Award from Acoustic Guitar magazine. Music from the CD has been featured on the BBC’s “Great Guitars” radio program, and has been published in Japan’s Acoustic Guitar magazine and Mel Bay’s Master Anthology of Fingerstyle Guitar, Vol. 3. McGowan frequently contributes lessons and articles to Acoustic Guitar, Guitar Teacher and Jazz Improv magazines.

McGowan is an assistant professor of music performance at the University of Colorado Denver. He has served as an artist-clinician for the Maine Arts Commission since 2000 and has taught guitar at the University of Maine and Bowdoin College.

Berry specializes in Viennese music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She appeared frequently in the Utrecht Early Music Festival Fringe Series in the Netherlands as a soloist and a chamber musician, and has also given solo recitals in the U.S. and Italy. She is also active as a writer, most notably penning extensive liner notes for fortepianist Bart van Oort’s Complete Keyboard Works of Mozart, a 14-CD set released by Brilliant Classics in 2006.