* This ticket is a general admission ticket and includes all seats outside of the reserved area. To upgrade your seats, please purchase The Acoustic Guitar Summit reserved ticket or season pass. The doors open at 7:00 PM. While all seats are good at the Frist Congregational Church, only season pass ticket holders and people holding these reserved tickets will be in front portion of the hall. The Frist Congregational Church is located downtown at 1126 SW Park Ave.

Acoustic Guitar Summit

Saturday, September 11th, 2010 at 8 PM
Concert Venue: First Congregational Church

Mark Hanson
Grammy winning fingerstyle guitarist and author Mark Hanson is an experienced performer, composer, and recording artist. His recordings are heard regularly on NPR, and on syndicated radio and television programs, such as Martha Stewart Living and West Coast Live. Mark contibuted two pieces to the Henry Mancini - Pink Guitar CD that won a 2005 Grammy award for best Pop Instrumental album. Mark has also arranged and recorded two tunes - including the title track duet with Doug Smith - for 2007’s follow-up to the Pink Guitar CD: Cole Porter - Delovely Guitar.

Called by A Prairie Home Companion’s Pat Donohue “...perhaps the greatest teacher of fingerstyle guitar,” Mark is a prolific author and publisher in the guitar education field. He and his wife Greta Pedersen formed Accent On Music, LLC, in 1985. Since then, Mark has authored over 30 books, videos and DVDs on many aspects of guitar playing, available at www.AccentOnMusic.com and distributed by Music Sales Corporation and Alfred Publishing. His articles appear in Acoustic Guitar, Guitar Player and Fingerstyle Guitar magazines. In the '80s, Mark was an editor and columnist at Frets magazine, interviewing such luminaries at James Taylor, David Crosby, Jorma Kaukonen, and Leo Kottke. Each summer, Mark and Greta host the Accent On Music Fingerstyle Guitar Seminar in Portland, Oregon. At the culmination of the weeklong event, Mark shares the stage with his fellow instructors, who have included Tommy Emmanuel, John Renbourn, Laurence Juber, Guy Van Duser, Ed Gerhard, Donohue, John Knowles, Muriel Anderson, Doug Smith, Pat Kirtley, Alex de Grassi, Terry Robb, Chris Proctor, Al Petteway, Duck Baker, and Peppino D'Agostino. In 1989, Mark had the great pleasure to share the stage with the late Jerry Garcia. Mark Hanson's stage persona is highlighted by blazing fingerpicking, haunting ballads, fun songs and good humor. Stories of the music “biz” are both educational and hilarious, and there may even be a bit of audience participation!

Terry Robb
Terry Robb is one of those natural-born talents who makes guitar-slinging look simple. No wonder – Robb first came under the spell of the instrument when he was just a kid; his uncle, a professional swing musician, tutored him in ragtime, blues, country, and jazz. In college, Robb studied music theory with Czechoslovakian composer Tomas Svoboda; once classes ended, he hit the road with Frank Zappa/Capt. Beefheart alumnus Ramblin’ Rex Jakabosky, who taught him the ropes on the Northwest club scene. “When you come right down to it,” Robb explains, “I basically learned guitar by listening to old blues players. So, although I play all kinds of music, my personality as a musician has a blues flavor.”

In the early 1980s, Robb struck up a friendship with legendary guitarist John Fahey, who asked him to produce and play on several of Fahey’s recordings. One of these, the eclectic Let Go, was cited by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top three releases of 1983 – right alongside Prince’s Purple Rain and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. Throughout the decade, Robb and Fahey collaborated on a handful of albums, including Time God Casualty and Old Girlfriends and Other Horrible Memories.

The 1990s found Robb focusing on his own career. He collaborated with fellow Oregonian Curtis Salgado on Hit It and Quit It. He then embarked on a series of national tours with renown musicians including Buddy Guy and rocker Steve Miller, concluding the run with an appearance on the Conan O’Brien Show. In the studio, he contributed to a number of Grammy and Emmy award-winning projects, including producing a song for the Robert Redford blockbuster The Horse Whisperer, and later producing a W.C. Handy-nominated album for blues-woman Sheila Wilcox.

In 1994, Robb signed a contract with the Burnside label, where he made his home for nearly a decade, releasing both acoustic (Heart Made of Steel and When I Play My Blues Guitar rank as two of his best), and stinging electric blues albums.

Along the way, Robb’s reputation grew: As he began cultivating an original style that combined traditional blues elements with more eccentric licks drawn from the jazz world – a la guitar greats Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang – he developed a following of his own, to date winning the Cascade Blues Association’s prestigious “Muddy Award” a record nineteen times and vaulting to their Hall of Fame in both electric and acoustic categories. Robb was invited to perform with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, and his collaboration with Doug Smith and Mark Hansen as the Acoustic Guitar Summit has become a favorite among fingerstyle stylists. A capable teacher in his own right, he also started teaching acoustic guitar workshops at festivals like the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival and producing instructional videos for Stefan Grossman’s Vestapol series, before eventually opening his own Terry Robb Northwest School of Acoustic Guitar.

After dominating the Pacific Northwest blues scene, Robb began seeking out new challenges. In 2004, he departed Burnside, landing at the Memphis, Tennessee-based Yellow Dog Records for his latest album, Resting Place. He journeyed to Memphis, where he cut with engineer Roland James at Sam Phillips’ Recording Studio, located just around the corner from Phillips’ original studio, Sun Records. A group of crackerjack musicians – including Stax alumnus Willie Hall (drums), contemporary Beale Streeter Charlie Wood (piano), and blues/jazz protégé Paul Taylor (bass) – were awaiting him; like Janes – who’s worked with iconic players like Jerry Lee Lewis, Ike Turner, and Billy Lee Riley – they were eager to see what this outsider had to offer.

Robb strapped on his guitar, stepped up to the mic, and began playing Doc Pomus’ “Lonely Avenue,” made famous by the late great Ray Charles. He cranked up Chuck Berry’s “Back To Memphis,” and delivered an astonishing take on Big Boy Crudup’s “My Baby Left Me.” He played his own songs, including “Like Merle” and “Madison Ave. Shuffle.” He pulled the Booker T. & the MGs’ “My Sweet Potato” out of his trick bag, and sang John Fahey’s “Joe Kirby Blues.” The group jelled, Robb metamorphosed from everyman into a superbly skilled guitarslinger. What should’ve taken two days was cut in a single session, and Robb, clearly at the top of his game, passed the test with flying colors. The result was a critically acclaimed and popular album, Resting Place.

Today, Terry Robb tours as a solo performer, expanding his repertoire beyond blues to a variety of guitar genres. He is currently breaking in his first band in several years, and hopes to be ready soon to take it on the road. Robb is also in high demand as a record producer, often working with Portland veteran sound engineer Dennis Carter at Carter's venerable Falcon Recording Studio in Portland.

Doug Smith
Grammy Award Winning guitarist Doug Smith, winner of the prestigious Winfield International Fingerstyle Competition in 2006, offers “stunning fingerpicking” according to Billboard Magazine. His original music has been heard on radio and TV stations throughout the world, including CNN, ESPN, E’s “True Hollywood Story”, The Discovery Channel, The Martha Stewart Show and The View; his playing has been heard on the soundtracks of movies such as "Twister", "Moll Flanders" and the 2007's “August Rush”; and he has performed on the nationally syndicated radio programs "Echoes", "West Coast Live", and "River City Folk", as well as local radio and TV shows around the country.

Doug records for Solid Air Records, has over a dozen CDs to his credit, and lives and teaches in Vancouver, Washington, and his latest offerings are a performance/instructional DVD of his music, and a music/tab book, both published by Alfred. Doug just picked up a Grammy Award, along with 11 other great guitarists, for his contribution to the Henry Mancini tribute CD “Pink Guitar”, which won the Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental CD! In 2006 Doug competed with 40 other guitarists from around the world to win the International Fingerstyle Competition held at the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival in Winfield, Kansas.

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Price: $35.00