Thursday, November 1, 2018, at 7:30 PM
Diller-Quaile School of Music, 24 East 95th Street, New York City
An exciting new talent, winner of the 2018 EuroStrings competition, in a joint EuroStrings/NYCCGS presentation
Program:
GIULIANI Grande Ouverture, Op. 61
DOWLAND Three Pieces
HOUGHTON Ophelia … a haunted Sonata
VILLA-LOBOS Three Preludes
GINASTERA Sonata for Guitar, Op. 70
Currently based in Berlin, Jesse Flowers is developing a reputation as an exciting talent among the next generation of classical guitarists.
He has been a prize-winner in multiple international music competitions, including the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb (German National Music Competition) in 2016. He has won first prize in the multi-instrumental Prinzessin Margaret von Hessen Competition 2015 and the Nürtingen International Guitar Competition 2016. He was awarded the scholarship of the Darmstädter Musikpreis and the Guy Parsons Award of the Australian Music Foundation in recognition of his talent.
Flowers’s 2016-17 season saw him perform for the first time in Australia, with a solo concert tour including Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. Other highlights included a debut solo recital in Sweden at the Sundsvalls Guitar Festival and receiving prizes at international guitar competitions in Salzburg and Koblenz. In 2017/18 he will perform over 20 chamber music recitals throughout Germany as part of the Bundesauswahl Konzerte für Jünger Künstler (Nationwide Selection of Young Artists Concerts). He has also been invited to perform at the Hong Kong Altamira International Guitar Symposium and in Shanghai.
Born in Sydney to an Australian-Chinese father and German mother, Flowers was inspired to pursue a career in music while attending Newtown High School of the Performing Arts. He then completed his Bachelor of Music at the Australian National University under Minh Le Hoang and Timothy Kain. In 2014 he moved to Germany to further his studies with Tilman Hoppstock at the Akademie für Tonkunst Darmstadt. As of October 2017 he is undertaking a Masters of Music at the Universität der Künste Berlin under Thomas Müller-Pering. The late composer Phillip Houghton was an important mentor throughout his studies.
Flowers’s solo concert programmes are marked by his interpretations of repertoire ranging from his own transcriptions of the works of J.S. Bach to important works from the 20th century by Britten and Ginastera. He is also an avid chamber musician and has performed in diverse chamber music settings, regularly in duo alongside voice and cello.
Photo by Masahiro Nishio
