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ln the summer of 2013, José Luis Puerta, an original member of the orchestra and a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona took over as conductor and artistic director. The TGSO continued under his baton but added its first performances outside of Tucson, one at the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) regional conference at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, and as part of the Arizona Ensemble Festival at Glendale Community College as part of an 85-player guitar ensemble. Ten representatives of the TGSO performed Shingo Fujii’s Concierto de Los Angeles, with Bill Kanengiser as a soloist, as part of an all-Arizona Guitar Orchestra which toured Tucson, Tempe, and Flagstaff.
The Tucson Guitar Society also began to commission music for guitar ensemble; First was “Once We Moved Like the Wind” by Brad Richter, premiered by the Arizona Guitar Orchestra, an ensemble formed of players from the Tucson Guitar Society, Phoenix and Flagstaff under the baton of Chuck Hulihan of Glendale Community College. Our collaborating group also commissioned Andrew York to write for us, and he created “By Chants” for the guitar quartet and ensemble, a piece is based on a gaming song of the Havasupai Tribe of the Grand Canyon area. It premiered in the spring of 2017 with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and the Arizona Guitar Orchestra. This was followed by renowned Welsh composer Steven Goss’ piece called “Minimal Effort.” which references the Arizona desert with the silence of morning followed by the startling sounds of its wildlife as the day begins.
This year we engaged Olga Amelkina-Vera to write a guitar ensemble and voice piece, setting the words of poet Ofelia Zepeda, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, to music. The “Pulling Down the Clouds” premiered in April 2023 with mezzo Mack Wolz singing.