Seattle Guitar Circle closes out 2024 with an engaging set of music featuring our most fundamental technique of group circulation, and are delighted to collaborate at last with Mark Hilliard Wilson and his Seattle Guitar Orchestra.
Seattle Guitar Circle is a multicultural guitar ensemble founded in 1993, representing an international community of music and education founded with Guitar Craft in 1985. Its members and composers hail from many different ensembles, including both the League and Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists, Tiny Orchestral Moments, the Atomic Chamber Ensemble, Electric Gauchos, Los Angeles Electric 8, and Guitar Circle New England, among many others. Featuring music from the world of classical, folk, bluegrass, rock, and the avant-garde, every performance is a unique event for the audience, the musicians, and the music, with a multiplicity of new and timeless moments. In addition to performances in the Seattle area, its members can also be found hosting monthly open seminars at Phinney Community Center, teaching at residential and online Guitar Circle courses, and actively engaging with the community through education and collaboration.
Mark Hilliard Wilson has an engaging approach to teaching and programming concerts that draws from the deep well of history. Founding the Seattle Guitar Orchestra in 2000, he became the cathedral guitarist at St. James Cathedral of Seattle in 2006. Wilson has taught at Whatcom Community College, Bellevue College, Rosewood Guitar, and is currently at the Holy Names Academy; his compositions are published by Seconda Prattica and performed widely. Recently, he premiered a concerto written for him in 2023 by Ukrainian composer-in-exile Oleg Boyko; 2023 also saw the release of the music of Nigeria’s Taiwo Adegoke for guitars, which also featured cellist Abbie Eads. In April 2025, he will perform the 1951 Heitor Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto with the Port Townsend Symphony, under the direction of Tigran Arakelyan. In 2024, Wilson released a set of videos based on his ongoing collaboration with Boyko; he also worked with the Seattle Classic Guitar Society to commission Boyko’s Secret Life of Trees for the Seattle Guitar Orchestra, which was recorded and filmed at St. James Cathedral.
The Seattle Guitar Orchestra was founded in 2000, after having met at the Seattle Classic Guitar Society Holiday Concert in December 1999. It is now 24 years later, and they have performed at every SCGS Holiday Concert since, along with performances at Benaroya Hall for the Day of Music Concerts, many of the Northwest Guitar Tests, and much more.