{"id":4650,"date":"2016-07-27T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=4650"},"modified":"2016-07-27T09:03:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T16:03:00","slug":"guitarist-thomas-kikta-tapped-to-compose-piece-for-new-york-city-ballet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/guitarist-thomas-kikta-tapped-to-compose-piece-for-new-york-city-ballet\/","title":{"rendered":"Guitarist Thomas Kikta Tapped to Compose Piece for New York City Ballet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Kikta<\/a> may be best known in the classical guitar world for his contributions to a number of book and video extrapolations on the guitar pedagogy of his legendary Peabody Institute teacher Aaron Shearer<\/a> (1919\u20132008), including the third edition of Shearer\u2019s landmark Classic Guitar Technique Vol. 1<\/a><\/em>, The Shearer Method: Classic Guitar Foundations<\/em>, The Shearer Method: Learning the Fingerboard<\/em>, and others. For the past three decades, Kikta has been the director of the Classic Guitar<\/a> and Recording Arts and Sciences programs at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and since Shearer\u2019s death, vice-president of the Aaron Shearer Foundation, which is \u201cdedicated to preserving and propagating the teachings and legacy of the revolutionary guitar pedagogue.\u201d He is an experienced recording engineer and producer, working in many styles, and, germane to this news item, a composer.<\/p>\n

Kikta was recently tapped by the New York City Ballet<\/a> to compose music for a new ballet set to debut at Lincoln Center in Manhattan at their annual Fall Gala event on September 20, and then move into the troupe\u2019s repertoire for the 2016-2017 season. The ballet is being choreographed by Peter Walker, with whom Kikta previously collaborated on ballet pieces for the New York Choreographic Institute in 2011 and another called Inverno<\/em> for the School of American Ballet last year. Not coincidentally, Kikta\u2019s daughter Emily <\/a>is a dancer who is or has been associated with all those groups, and she will be a featured dancer in the new production.<\/p>\n

According to a press release about the new ballet put out by D\u2019Addario<\/a> (whose strings Kikta endorses, along with Alhambra Guitars<\/a>, Line 6, and Fishman Electronics), the still-untitled new work \u201cfeatures ten dancers\u00a0 and takes the listener through a journey of guitar from classical to contemporary, with altered tunings and various guitar sounds.\u201d Kikta will play guitar and be joined by pianist Arkadiy Figlin, Juilliard\u2019s Raymond Mase on trumpet, and James on drums. Sounds promising! \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2014Blair Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Emily
Emily Kikta dances in George Balanchine’s’ “Jewels” with the New York City Ballet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Kikta may be best known in the classical guitar world for his contributions to a number of book and video extrapolations on the guitar pedagogy of his legendary Peabody Institute teacher Aaron Shearer (1919\u20132008), including the third edition of Shearer\u2019s landmark Classic Guitar Technique Vol. 1, The Shearer Method: Classic Guitar Foundations, The Shearer Method: Learning the Fingerboard, and others. For the past three decades, Kikta has been the director of the Classic Guitar and Recording Arts and Sciences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/kikta-2.jpg?fit=660%2C372&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}