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Guitar
Festival - Day Three
In the twenty-eight years since he started recording, Alex
de Grassi (All Saints, 8pm, £12/£10) has built
himself up the reputation of being just about the best finger-picking
steel string guitarist in the United States. So it is quite
a big coup for the Lewes Guitar Festival for him to be travelling
to England just to play in Lewes. De Grassi, the grandson
of an Italian immigrant classical violinist, recently released
his ninth studio album, The Water Garden, a solo guitar tour-de-force,
as are his classic albums Turning: Turning Back, Slow Circle
and Southern Exposure. The inspiration for the music was the
rain which was pouring down in the weeks he was writing the
music for the album. “It grafted itself to my subconsciousness,”
he says. “I thought wow, all this sounds like water
music.”
The evening concert at Pelham House at 5.15 features the Oxford-based
duo Luis D’Agostino and Pete Oxley, who play jazz standards
and Argentinian tangos. Like all good duos the two mens’
very different styles act as a foil for one another: D’Agostino
is a former rock musician, Oxley applies a more analytical
approach. Today’s free concert in the castle garden
features William Elliott Whitmore (1pm), fresh from a tour
supporting the Pogues. The singer-songwriter has the reputation
of having a fine gravelly voice which is usually compared
with that of Tom Waits. DL |
