3 Aug 2015

Teacher Spotlight: Jack Sanders

Honored in 2013 with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Guitar Society, Jack Sanders’ performances have included The Sitka, Kapalua, and Arrowhead Bach Festivals. He has performed with the St. Petersburg, Colorado, and Angeles String Quartets. Recent performances include Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the Claremont Symphony and premiere performances of the Concerto for Resonator Guitar and Orchestra by Gabriel Bolaños with the Mill Valley Philharmonic. As a touring artist for the Piatigorsky Foundation since 2005, Sanders performs throughout the United States.

His duo with violinist Clayton Haslop has appeared at two GFA Festivals, Merkin Hall in New York, the Oregon Bach Festival and in concerts from Hawaii and Alaska to Maine. The Haslop/Sanders Duo toured for the California Arts Council, and a 1988 tour of China included the Shanghai Conservatory, where Mr. Sanders was the first U.S. guitarist to appear after the Cultural Revolution. The Duo has recorded for Centaur and Townhall. Mr. Sanders recorded the Preludes of Ponce, Villa-Lobos and Carlevaro, which Townhall Records released in 2000.

Mr. Sanders, along with oboist Allan Vogel and flutist Janice Tipton, has appeared at the International Music Festival of Costa Rica and the Sedona Chamber Music Festival. He has given first performances of Las Folios D’Espana, a concerto by Louis Moyse, Music in 4 Sharps by Ian Krouse, and the U.S. premiere of Raymond Luedeke’s Elemental Dances with the Colorado String Quartet.

A faculty member of Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University since 1980, Sanders has had numerous students win prizes in major competitions including the Guitar Foundation of America, Parkening, Tokyo, Indiana International, ASTA and Spotlight Awards.

An accomplished luthier, Sanders builds modern guitars, vihuelas, baroque guitars and 19th Century instruments. Recently, he built Rene Lacôte (c. 1830) copies for the San Francisco Conservatory and Yale University, and baroque guitars after Stradivarius (1700) for the UCLA Baroque Ensemble, CSU Dominguez Hills and Columbus State University in Georgia. Mr. Sanders received his degrees from California Institute of the Arts in 1980, studying there with Stuart Fox. As a three-time full scholarship recipient to the Banff Center of Fine Arts, Sanders studied there with renowned guitar instructor Oscar Ghiglia.