 "Photo: Joe Muldoon/Poly Post")
The Los Angeles Strings performed at the Music Recital Hall Friday night, using a mix of eclectic stringed instruments.
The Strings consists of three members: Jack Sanders, a soloist, chamber musician and teacher; Mark Menzies, a New Zealand-born, Grammy-nominated concerto soloist; and Jason Yoshida, a guitarist and pluck instrument expert.
The performance was co-developed by music professor Peter Yates and Sanders to introduce different string instruments to those who attended.
"I wanted the students to see this kind of early instrument because a lot of people play guitar but don't realize its history goes back 1,000 years, and it has various versions of lute, theorbos and vihuela, instruments like this that go back to the 16th century," said Yates.
Sanders and Yoshida started the performance with a duet on the vihuelas to pieces by Spanish composers Luys de Naravez and Enriquez de Valderrabano.
The vihuela, a predecessor to the modern guitar, contains 12 strings instead of six strings and has a slightly different tuning.
Being about the size of a ukulele and a half, the plucking of the vihuelas strings kept the audience intrigued with the intricate sound it produced - not as deep as the sound of a regular guitar, but just as loud with a higher, faster pitch.
Members in the audience were awestruck by how such a small instrument could produce a powerful presence in the hall.
Sanders built a majority of the instruments featured in the performance.
"[I've been playing] basically since about 2000. I built the guitars that I played tonight and in 2000 built a vihuela, which is the instrument I started the concert with," said Sanders.
An instrument that attracted the audience even more than the vihuela was the 6-foot tall theorbo, masterfully played by Yoshida.
Being part of the lute family, this eccentric instrument goes back to the medieval period.
"It was born out of the Renaissance in the transition time to the Baroque music period, and it was developed to kind of accompany the new style of music that was being developed, called monody," said Yoshida.
Yoshida has been playing the theorbo for about seven years, but played concert guitar before that.
Just because Yoshida plays unique instruments does not mean that those are the only types he plays.
"[I first played] electric guitar when I was 14 and drums, so about 20 years or so," said Yoshida of his musical background.
Students in the audience enjoyed how the performers complemented each other with their instruments.
"It was really good. Great musicianship, very involved, and, like, especially with like the early instruments like the vihuela and the theorbo," said Nicholas Barrett, a third-year music education student. "They are things that aren't usually taught around here, so you have to go out and research it yourself … It's just really impressive."
After the intermission, the performance continued with a different type of sound in the atmosphere.
Rachel Rudich, a professor of flute at California Institute of the Arts, joined Sanders in closing the night's performance. She was asked to fill in because Menzies had an undisclosed cancellation, but adapted perfectly to the situation.
One might think guitars and flutes might not go together properly, but with Sanders on the modern guitar and Rudich on the flute, the two sounds blended together in perfect harmony.
"It was a bit bizarre," said Rudich of being asked to fill in for a violinist. "It was a little bit different. Flute and guitar always go together. There's tons of literature, so it's not like you're the oddball; you fit in nicely. … Jack called me to play and I was happy to fill in on a last-minute notice."
The performance ended with three pieces by Serbian-born guitarist Miroslav Tadi?.
"This is one of the best shows I've seen here. I enjoyed the baroque guitar, vihuelas and [it was awesome] when the flute came out," said Joseph Canal, a fifth-year music performance student. "I was blown away; it was a great show."
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