Guitarist Eliot Fisk is known worldwide as a charismatic performer famed for his adventurous and virtuosic repertoire. He is also celebrated for his willingness to take music into unusual venues such as schools, senior centres and even logging camps and prisons. After nearly fifty years performing before the public, he remains as his mentor Andrés Segovia once wrote, ‘at the top line of our artistic world’. He performs regularly as soloist with leading orchestras, as well as performing as soloist in recitals and with various other chamber ensembles around the world, to popular and critical acclaim.

The repertoire of the classical guitar has been transformed through Fisk’s innumerable transcriptions, including works by J.S. Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Granados, Albéniz and many others. In addition, numerous new works have been dedicated to him by composers as varied as Luciano Berio, Leonardo Balada, Robert Beaser, Nicholas Maw, George Rochberg, Daniel Bernard Roumain and Kurt Schwertsik.

Fisk remains a prolific recording artist. Recordings include Ralf Gawlick’s Kollwitz Konnex for soprano and guitar (Musica Omnia), Anthony Paul De Ritis’s Pop Concerto with Gil Rose leading the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a recording of new music dedicated to and transcribed by Fisk of works by Beaser, Corigliano, Schwertsik and Rochberg (Wildner Records), duo discs with amenco legend Paco Peña (Nimbus Records) and cellist Yehuda Hanani (Albany Records).

Fisk was the last direct pupil of Andrés Segovia. He also studied interpretation with the legendary harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale University, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1976 and where directly following his own graduation in 1977, he founded the guitar department at the Yale School of Music.

Fisk is professor at the Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg (where he teaches in five languages), and in Boston at the New England Conservatory where in 2010 he received the Krasner Award as ‘Teacher of the Year’. In June 2006, King Juan Carlos of Spain awarded Fisk the ‘Cruz de Isabel la Catolica’ for his service to the cause of Spanish music. Earlier recipients of this honour have included Andrés Segovia and Yehudi Menuhin. Fisk is Founder and Artistic Director of Boston GuitarFest (www.bostonguitarfest.org), an annual cross- disciplinary festival.