Wirral prepares for best in the world

Aug 20 2007 by Phil Key, Liverpool Daily Post

MANY of the world’s greatest guitarists, including the celebrated John Williams, will be heading for Wirral later this year for Britain’s biggest guitar festival.

The International Guitar Festival of Great Britain based at locations around Wirral will this year be celebrating its 19th birthday.

Festival director Rob Smith says with charming immodesty it is now the best guitar festival in the world.

“It will be a month of amazing guitar music.”

The festival, running throughout much of November, now has a patron in the figure of British jazz guitarist Martin Taylor.

He accepted the role last year after director Rob Smith revealed that not only did Taylor play in the first festival in 1989 – billed simply as “Martin Taylor, an evening of solo jazz guitar” – but has been a huge advocate of the festival.

He has also performed most years in a variety of combinations, from solo to quartet.

He will be back this year with his new jazz band Freternity featuring trumpeter Guy Barker and pianist Dave Newton, said to be his most straight-ahead jazz group for years.

He will be appearing at the Pacific Road Arts Centre, Birkenhead, on November 18.

It is the same venue where Wil- liams will be playing two concerts on November 25 and 25 to bring the festival to a close. Australian-born Williams, 66, has been one of the leading classical guitarists for many years but has also strayed into many other musicals genres.

He was for some time a member of the group Sky but had his biggest commercial success in 1978 when he recorded Cavatina by Stanley Myers for the film The Deer Hunter. It became a world-wide hit. Later, when lyrics were added to it as He Was Beautiful, he recorded it again with Cleo Laine.

His November 24 concert will feature Williams in a duo with jazz guitarist John Etheridge, a collaboration featuring world music which they originally recorded for an album in Dublin.

His November 25 concert will be an afternoon solo recital which will bring the festival to an end.

The festival opens on November 7 – also at Pacific Road – with a concert by local guitar hero Gary Murphy with his band, recreating the guitar sounds of the great players from Django Reinhardt to Eric Clapton. Between the two dates, the festival will be featuring every sort of guitar playing from blues and country to classical and rock.

Other star names at the festival include rock band Never the Bride, classical virtuoso Stan Yates and singer/ songwriter Ralph McTell.

FURTHER details available at www.bestguitarfest.com

philikey@dailypost.co.uk