VOLGA – Have you heard any good Middle Eastern Oud or Kemenche lately?
How about South American Charango and Zamponia or East Indian Tablas or Santoor?
These and many other ethnic instruments from the Middle East, Central Asia, India, China and South America will be played by multi-instrumentalist Todd Green at 7 p.m. Friday at the Sioux Valley Performing Arts Center in Volga.
Admission is $6 for adults and $4 for seniors and students. Students are admitted free with a paying adult.
The concert will be preceded by a half-hour quiet, strings-only, live prelude.
Green has astounded audiences across the country with his original music performed on more than 30 string, flute and percussion instruments from all over the world. His concert will be enhanced by three five-channel “loopers,” which allow him to layer many instruments for his trademark “solo-ensemble” performance. Green intersperses his playing with entertaining explanations of the music and the instruments.
Green has been writing and performing his own music professionally since the age of 15. He studied composition, arrangement and performance at Berklee College of Music and privately with guitar greats George Benson, Pat Metheny, Christopher Parkening and Mick Goodrick. He has also studied ethnic instruments, including the Indian Bansuri Flute with masters Sachdev and Steve Gorn, and many other instruments with players from around the world who now reside in New York City and San Francisco.
Most of Green’s 45 years as a professional musician were spent on the East Coast, especially New York City, where he performed with the top echelon of studio musicians and toured extensively with bands throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.
In 1988, Green decided to trade in the man-made mountains of New York City for the real ones in Montana to pursue his own music full time. He stopped playing the electric guitar to concentrate on acoustic music and has since performed as a solo artist for concert associations, arts councils and colleges throughout the United States and Canada.
He now lives in the Lake Tahoe area.
His column on improvisation and composition has been published in Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine, where he also received kudos for his first recording “Awakening.”
Green is a 2017 Artist Fellowship recipient, Nevada Arts Council’s top artistic recognition, as well as a recipient of an Award of Excellence from Traditional Association for Cultural Harmony. Green will also share his talents with Sioux Valley students earlier in the week. His residency is made possible with grants from the South Dakota Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the South Dakota Humanities Council.
