Matthew Ardizzone
August 1, 2003
Guitarist Matthew Ardizzone has performed throughout the United States and Canada and was a prizewinner in the Stotsenberg and Rantucci International Guitar Competitions. In 1996 he advanced to the semi-finals in the Walter W. Naumburg International Competition. His festival appearances as teacher and performer include the Eastman GuitarFest, the Ithaca College Winter Guitar Festival, and the Shady Side Chamber Music Festival. In addition to being a solo recitalist, he is an active collaborator. He recently formed Duo Forza with violinist Movses Pogossian. Other chamber music partners include flutist Leone Buyse, tenor Gregory Kunde, and saxophonist Matthew Sintchak (Duo Nouveau). He is active in Ann Arbor's musical community, and has collaborated with Chamber Music Ann Arbor (with violist Yizhak Schotten and cellist Anthony Eliot), the Canton Chamber Players of the Plymouth Symphony, and the contemporary music groups Brave New Works and The Phoenix Ensemble. He has been a guest artist with the World Saxophone Congress (with Duo Nouveau) the National Flute Association Convention (with flutist Wendy Mehne) and the Conductor's Retreat at Medomak.
Matthew’s first CD, entitled Mazurka!, was released by the Aardvark Media record label, and has been nationally distributed. The CD was picked by the 2001 Communicator Awards for a “Crystal Award of Excellence.” The disk features mazurkas by 19th- and early 20th-century guitarists, and Matthew’s transcriptions of Chopin and Granados. His other arrangements include Rossini songs for voice and guitar; Tchaikovsky Romances, for ’cello and guitar; Bach’s “Italian” Concerto for guitar duo, and numerous other arrangements for Duo Forza (violin and guitar), Duo Nouveau (saxophone and guitar) and the Finger Lakes Guitar Quartet. Matthew is also an avid scholar, and his work has been published in Soundboard Magazine and with Mel Bay Publications.
Matthew’s teachers have included Edward Flower, Nicholas Goluses and Peter Clemente. He has played in masterclasses for Manuel Barrueco, Sergio and Odair Assad, and lutenist Paul O’Dette, and has studied in weeklong residencies with Eliot Fisk (Norfolk Chamber Music Festival) and the Castellani-Andriaccio Duo (Chautauqua). With Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in guitar performance from Ithaca College, he was the first guitarist to receive the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music where he was also awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate.
As a teacher, Matthew has given master classes at schools throughout the country, including the Cleveland Institute of Music, Eastern Michigan University, Houston Baptist University and the University of Iowa. He has been on the faculties of Eastman’s Community Education Division, St. John Fisher College, and Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, teaching both guitar and music appreciation (the latter from 1992-2001). He now lives in Ann Arbor, MI where he is executive director of Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, a nonprofit artist management agency. He is an adjunct faculty member at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
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