Artzt, Alice (Josephine)
Artzt, Alice (Josephine)
Artzt, Alice (Josephine), American guitarist; b. Philadelphia, March 16, 1943. She studied piano and flute before taking up the classical guitar when she was 13. She pursued training with Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya in France and with Julian Bream in England, and also was a student of Otto Luening (composition) and Paul Henry Lang (musicology) at Columbia Univ. (B.A., 1967), and of Darius Milhaud (composition). From 1966 to 1969 she taught at the Mannes Coll. of Music in N.Y., and then at Trenton (N.J.) State Coll. from 1977 to 1980. In 1969 she made her formal debut in a recital at Wigmore Hall in London, and thereafter pursued a global career as a recitalist and as a soloist with orchs. In later years, she also toured extensively with her own Alice Artzt Guitar Trio. In addition to articles and reviews in journals, she publ. the books The Art of Practicing (1978) and Rhythmic Mastery (1997). Her repertoire includes not only the standard guitar literature and various works written for her, but also transcriptions of works for guitar solo, duo, and trio, ranging from Handel, Vivaldi, and Haydn to Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, and Bernstein.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire