Biography

In article after article, the one thing that is always mentioned in addition to Eliot Fisk's skills as a guitarist and transcriber is his commitment to music as a changing force in peoples' lives. He firmly and enthusiastically advocates for more teaching of music in schools and more active community involvement by musicians. He himself gives recitals at schools, prisons, retirement homes, and other community institutions whenever his concert and teaching schedules allow it. What makes Fisk stand out as a performer are his passionate, intense playing, whether it be Bach or Scarlatti, Berio or Rochberg, and his transcriptions that remain true to the original works' musical intentions, but are idiomatic of the guitar. His dedication to giving back to audiences and communities is credited to his upbringing in a Quaker home. His father bought both a banjo and a guitar for seven-year-old Fisk, hoping that Fisk would like one of the instruments. He settled on the guitar and virtually taught himself to play, spending hours practicing each day as a teenager. He took a bachelor's and master's degree in music from Yale, where he studied with harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Albert Fuller. Shortly after graduating, Fisk was asked to help establish that school's guitar program. His guitar teachers included Oscar Ghiglia and Alirio Diaz, but his most important mentor was Andrés Segovia. A recording of his transcriptions of Bach and Scarlatti was released in 1978, and many more albums appeared throughout the 1980s. One of those, Mountain Songs, composed by Robert Beaser and recorded with one of Fisk's frequent partners, flutist Paula Robison, was nominated for a Grammy in 1987. The following year, Luciano Berio dedicated his Sequenza XI to Fisk. Fisk has taught at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik, and in 1989 started teaching at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where he utilizes several languages in his classes. Fisk's album of transcriptions of Paganini's 24 Caprices (1992) was called "daring" and was a best seller. Many of his transcriptions are of Baroque works, but he has arranged the music of Mozart and Haydn as well. Some of Segovia's compositions were found in the mid-'90s, and Segovia's wife gave Fisk the exclusive first rights to their performance and recording. The resultant album, Segovia: Canciones Populares, became one of Billboard's Classical Chart best-sellers. Fisk joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory in 1996. In 2006 he established a successful guitar festival there -- co-directed with his wife, guitarist Zaira Meneses -- and in 2010 won a "teacher of the year" award from the school. Fisk performs as much chamber music as he does concerto or solo music, with several well-known string quartets, vocalist Ute Lemper, and Turkish music specialist Burhan Öçal. Fisk and flamenco guitarist Paco Peña released a duo recital on Nimbus in 2014. In addition to the works dedicated to him by Berio and by George Rochberg, Fisk has premiered new works for guitar by Ernesto Halffter and Leonardo Balada. His recording of Robert Beaser's guitar concerto was released on Linn in 2017, the same year he founded another guitar festival in Salzburg. He began collaborating with Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in the late 2010s. Together they have recorded concertante works by Anthony Paul de Ritis (2017) and John Corigliano (2022). ~ Patsy Morita, Rovi