Mēla Guitar Quartet
Saturday, March 22, 2025
7:30 pm
Sundin Music Hall
Hamline University
The Mēla Guitar Quartet takes their name from the Sanskrit word for ‘festival’. Their programs celebrate an engaging and imaginatively wide-ranging program of original pieces for guitar quartet and their own arrangements.
Winners of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America International Ensemble Competition 2023, the Mela guitar quartet are known for their imaginative, engaging programming, ingenious arrangements and commissioning celebrated original works.
Hailed for their “collective technical brilliance and preternatural ensemble making,” by Gramophone, the quartet have released three albums, the complete guitar quartets of composer/author Anthony Burgess, the complete guitar chamber works of Stephen Dodgson, both with Naxos, and the self-released album “Pluck, Strum, and Hammer!”
Notable performances have included the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, Kings Place Hall One, St. James’ Church Piccadilly, Barbican Centre’s Milton Court, St. George’s Bristol, Westminster Abbey, Soest Germany, and of course Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom. In 2019 the quartet embarked on an 8-concert tour of China, including Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, Changsha concert hall and Tianjin Grand Theatre. The quartet will tour America as part of their GFA winners prize in 2025.
The quartet formed in 2015 as graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. They became International Guitar Festival Young Artists 2015/16, then Park Lane Group young artists 2018/19 and Royal Over-Seas League chamber music finalists 2019. The members Michael Butten and Zahrah Hutton joined founding members Matthew Robinson and George Tarlton in 2023.
The quartet are enthusiastically adding to the guitar quartet repertoire through their adventurous arrangements of much loved orchestral works and their commissions of new music. Laura Snowden, “My Clock is Broken!” (2019), “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (2023), Michael Finnissy, “Albion on the Road to Hell” (2019), Stephen Goss, “Venezuela” (2019) are pieces commissioned and premiered by the quartet.
“An exalted level of perfection” – Naxos.com
"A Stunning Display of Virtuosity." "Wizardy". "Revelatory music making" – Soundboard 2023