It’s the ability to arrange his own music as well as commission works that has kept Joseph Hagedorn performing with the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet since he helped found it in 1986.
At the time, not a lot of music was written for guitar quartets, which gave Hagedorn, along with other ensemble members, leeway to perform their own original works and arrangements as well as commissioned works, and a wide berth to collaborate in unique ways such as performing with a flamenco dancer, he said.
Today, they perform music they’ve arranged by composers including Bach, Mussorgsky and Prince.
With five albums produced, the quartet has performed at major U.S. cities, at Princeton University, the National Arts Center in Mexico City, Round Top International Guitar Festival and the Guitar Foundation of America Festival. The group, which comes to College of Lake County on Sunday, also has performed with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra and the Austin and Columbus symphonies. In March 2015, the quartet performed at the Guitar Art Festival in Belgrade, Serbia, and the group heads to Montenegro this summer for the Guitar Art Festival.
Hagedorn started learning acoustic guitar when he was 9 years old, he said, and though learning to play the electric guitar interested him, he had a great classical guitar teacher. The native Iowan has a master of music degree from the University of Minnesota and has been on the music faculty of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls since 1988.
He enjoyed playing solo, but he also enjoyed collaborating with others, so after college, he and a friend formed the guitar quartet.
“We were inspired by groups that always existed like the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet,” he said. “We had a few recordings we could listen to — but there weren’t that many and right from the beginning we realized we were going to have a hard time finding repertoire. So we took a two-pronged approach. We decided we wanted to commission composers to write new music for guitar quartet and we also started making our own arrangements.”
“With four guitars, it really gives you a lot of space to fill in the sound — and we can play music that could never play as a soloist, he said. The group today consists of Maja Radovanlija, Ben Kunkel and Wade Oden, who also teach guitar at various colleges.
It’s more challenging to arrange and compose a piece for four guitars as opposed to string quartet, Hagedorn said. “The string quartet has three different ranges of pitch.”
“With the guitar, we have to be creative to make it not sound like four people all playing in the same range. We’ll often tune bass strings much lower than a solo player ever would and then you can really get a more full sound with a big range that way.”
“There are still not that many guitar quartets around,” he said. “I feel like we’re doing a real service building a repertoire for this group. We like to think future quartets will benefit from what we’re doing.”
When looking for music to arrange, “we have to first imagine if it will sound good on four guitars.” Spanish, Latin American and folk music as well as compositions written for two pianos often work well, he said.
An audience favorite the guitarists will perform at CLC will be an arranged piece written by classically trained Argentine composer Astor Piazzollo.
“He focused on tango music. He reshaped it and reinvented it in some genius ways — so he’s famous for that,” Hagedorn said. “There’s a lot of drive and excitement to the piece.”
The audience also can look forward to an arranged tribute to Prince’s music, he said.
The quartet has arranged and commissioned enough compositions for at least two more albums, but right now the group is focusing on arranging more music and joining forces with other artists.
“We keep looking for more great repertoire to play,” Hagedorn.
“We have done some interesting collaborations — we’ve performed with flamenco dancers, a Chinese lute player, and then just this fall we are going to premier a new work we commissioned for guitar quartet and mixed choir at University of Minnesota.”
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Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer.
Minneapolis Guitar Quartet
When: 4 p.m. Sunday
Where: Mainstage Theatre, 19351 W. Washington, Grayslake
Tickets: $10-$25
Information: at 847-543-2300; jlc.clcillinois.edu