Guitarist Daniel Lippel to make Chatter debut

Mar. 26—Guitarist Daniel Lippel first learned about Chatter from musical colleagues who had played the Southwest.

"They've got a really good model and a devoted audience," Lippel said in a telephone interview from his New York home.

Lippel will play his debut concert with the Albuquerque chamber music group on Sunday, March 31.

Lippel will perform a solo program featuring music by J.S. Bach, Pulitzer Prize winner Tania Leon, the German composer Reiko Füting and more.

"I've been playing guitar for 36 years," Lippel said. "I'm very active playing a lot of contemporary classical music."

The guitarist will play Bach's "Suite in C minor" and his "Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat major."

"The guitar didn't exist when he was alive," Lippel said. "So he wrote for keyboard in a style that sounds like a lute. The music is easily adapted to the guitar."

He described the pieces as "more like instrumental church music."

Lippel will bring a well-tempered fretboard to play the works. He'll exchange the fretboards to produce different tunings.

"It means I can play the Bach pieces in the tunings that existed in his lifetime."

He'll also perform Füting's "wand-uhr — infinite shadows."

"He's written me a handful of pieces," Lippel said. "It's in an alternate tuning. It also incorporates a good deal of percussion on the instrument and some light stomping."

The Cuban American composer Leon penned "Paisanos Semos." The piece is an homage to peasants that till the soil; its structure is conceived organically by the composer as a sprouting seed.

When he was growing up in New Jersey, Lippel picked the guitar after hearing the distorted tones of Jimmy Page.

"I just got really excited and said, 'I want to do that,' " he said.

He began private lessons. His teacher played him some Bach, and he was converted.

"I guess I got hooked," Lippel said.