Eliot Fisk
Eliot Hamilton Fisk (born August 10, 1954) is an American classical guitarist. Music career. Education and teaching. Fisk was born into a Quaker family in Philadelphia. He finished high school in DeWitt, New York, and then studied music at Yale University with harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Albert Fuller. He received both B.A. and M.S. degrees, and in 1977 started Yale's guitar department. He was a student of guitarists Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Díaz, and Andrés Segovia. He received private lessons from Segovia over the years and was his last private student. Segovia became his mentor and one of  his biggest admirers. In 1989 Fisk became an instructor at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg in Austria and in 1996 at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He created the Boston GuitarFest and is its artistic director. Performing. Fisk has performed with orchestras around the world, including Orchestra of St. Luke's, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and the Pro Arte Orchestra. In chamber music settings, he has performed with the Juilliard String Quartet, Miró Quartet, Chilingirian Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet. He has performed and recorded with flautist Paula Robison; violinist Ruggiero  Ricci, jazz guitarists Joe Pass and Bill Frisell, flamenco guitarist Paco Peña, and singer Ute Lemper. Early in his career he was in recitals with soprano Victoria de los Ángeles. Transcriptions, commissions. Fisk has increased the amount of material available to classical guitarists by transcribing music written for other instruments. This increased repertoire includes his transcriptions of Bach, Scarlatti, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Haydn and Schubert. He has also expanded the body of music for classical guitar by commissioning new pieces from composers, such as Leonardo Balada, Robert Beaser, Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, Nicholas Maw, Xavier Montsalvatge, George Rochberg, and Kurt  Schwertsik. Recording. In the 1990s, Segovia's widow gave Fisk unpublished compositions by Segovia. Fisk turned these compositions into "Segovia: Canciones Populares", which became a bestseller on the Classical Album chart of "Billboard" magazine. His transcription of violinist Niccolò Paganini's "24 Caprices" also entered the chart and was widely praised. He collaborated with Ernesto Halffter, at the request of Segovia, on Halffter's Concierto for Guitar and Orchestra, which was performed with the Spanish National Orchestra and then turned into an album. With flutist Paula Robison, he recorded Robert Beaser's "Mountain Songs", which was nominated for a Grammy  Award in 1987. Views on guitarists. Eliot Fisk has said: