Cicchillitti-Cowan Duo
GUITAR DUO
Steve Cowan and Adam Cicchillitti are respected and acclaimed guitarists, quickly establishing themselves on both the guitar circuit and concert stages across Canada and abroad. Classical Guitar Magazine calls Cicchilllitti a “superb Canadian guitarist” and Cowan “one of Canada’s top contemporary classical guitarists.” Together, they form the dynamic ensemble Cicchillitti-Cowan Duo, a guitar partnership that focuses on expanding the guitar duo idiom through collaborations with living composers, while also performing popular duo works and their own arrangements of impressionist works from 20th-century France and Spain.
Currently completing their respective doctorates at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music with acclaimed guitarist Jérôme Ducharme, Cicchillitti (DMus., 2022) and Cowan (DMus., 2019) are two long-time friends and musicians who successfully toured Eastern Canada under the auspices of Debut Atlantic in 2018. The Cicchillitti-Cowan Duo presents intriguing programs and has just released an album of Spanish guitar music on the Analekta label. Their next album, featuring exclusively Canadian works by multiple generations of celebrated Canadian composers, will be released with Analekta in the fall of 2019.
CONCERTS
Premiere | Canadian composer Christine Donkin‘s “Distracted by the Stones on the Path”
Saturday October 17, 2020 | Classical Guitar Society of Calgary Online Event
BIOGRAPHY
Prize winner of nine major national and international performance competitions, seven of which are first prizes, Steve Cowan has performed throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. His critically-acclaimed debut album, Pour guitare, features exclusively Canadian music. He has commissioned several new works for guitar and given world premieres in major cities such as Paris, Toronto, and New York. 2018-2019 was a milestone season, including Steve’s concerto debut with Ensemble del Arte in Germany and the release of a new album with the EMEC discos label in Madrid.
Adam Cicchillitti was named one of CBC’s Top 30 under 30 in 2017. His other performance activities have seen him tour Eastern Canada with Jeunesses Musicales and baritone Philippe Courchesne-Leboeuf. With an artistic sensitivity for lieder, Cicchillitti also arranged 20 of Schubert’s lieder to accompany Philippe Sly for their 2013 CBC Révélations performance. The video recordings from this partnership has reached hundreds of thousands of people internationally through social media. Adam is the founder of the guitar program at Ottawa Suzuki Strings and a specialist in child pedagogy.
“How does Steve do this? first he gets us into large open spaces, with reverberating expansive harmonies, and then unrelentingly drives us into a musical saga … this set of constantly moving waves and winds, and sudden salient events never detracting the piece from the overall pulse. Steve “Eric the Red” just seems to make this all happen sonically in front of us.“
Marc L, YouTube viewer
PHOTOS: Simon Laroche | Greg Locke | Phil Maloney
