Scott Kritzer, Classical Guitarist
Biography
“an intelligent and self-assured musician with a sure technique and a deep musical sensitivity.”
Bernard Holland, The New York Times
Scott Kritzer’s consummate commitment to technical excellence as the solid structure beneath an unparalleled sense of musicality has brought him over four decades of accolades from audiences and critics alike, in concert halls in San Francisco, Frankfurt, New York, Vancouver, B.C., Washington, D.C., Munich, Los Angeles and Rimini, Italy. He has been featured in Japan’s Gendi Guitar and appeared in America’s Guitar Player Magazine and London’s Classical Guitar Magazine.
Mr. Kritzer has performed concerts in London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall, Lutheran Hall and Sapporo, Japan, and is often found performing on series that have included Itzhak Perlman, Ivo Pogorelic, Cecelia Bartoli and the Emerson and KRONOS String Quartets. In 1996 Mr. Kritzer was chosen by Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield to represent the entire state of Oregon in a special performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
“Kritzer’s lyricism is golden, his phrases hang deliciously in the air.”
David Stabler, The Oregonian
As a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mr. Kritzer studied with Michael Lorimer and Aaron Shearer and in master classes with Eliot Fisk, Leo Brouwer, Abel Carlevaro, Alirio Díaz, and Grammy Award Winner David Russell. He also attended master classes taught by Luciano Pavarotti, Gustav Leonhardt, Yehudi Menuhin, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and worked privately with pianist Alicia de Larrocha. After graduation Mr. Kritzer was chosen as an assistant to Mr. Lorimer in a year-long master class in North Carolina where he also gave a special tribute performance for the late Andres Segovia.
Hailed a “champion of the living American composer”, by David Maclaine of The Willamette Week, Mr. Kritzer has premiered newly commissioned works for guitar in virtually every major US city.
He has also served as Artistic Director to one of America’s oldest and most popular contemporary chamber groups, The Third Angle Ensemble. Kritzer has also performed with the Oregon Symphony as well with the The Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra, the Cascade Festival Orchestra, The Rogue Valley Orchestra, the Coos Bay Festival Orchestra, and the Newport Symphony, David Ogden Stiers, conductor.
In addition Mr. Kritzer toured for over a decade with soprano Janet Chvatal in the Chvatal/Kritzer Duo. The Duo charmed audiences throughout the US, Canada, Germany and Austria with arrangements of well loved opera arias for their duo.
Mr. Kritzer has a number of recordings for solo guitar and in duet with Janet Chvatal.
