Joseph Ekster

My Name is Joseph Ekster.I'm an amateur guitarist from Long Island, New York. I play mostly solo classical guitar at the moment, but I have played for a variety of bands. I grew up on classic rock and played metal and blues as a teenager. I’ve been studying classical guitar for the last 4 years. I recently graduated from Suffolk County Community College with an associates degree in general music. I plan to attend C. W. Post, Long Island University next fall, and study music education.I teach guitar privately on the north fork of Long Island. I teach all styles, and currently have students ranging from Classical to full blown Death Metal (haha...you know who you are), and ages from 7-57. If you interested, and live locally, feel free to contact me here, and we can arrange lessons.I apologize for the pops, and mediocre quality of the recordings currently up. They were recorded live at Suffolk County Community College during my senior recital. There was only one live air mic, and it was located in my guitar case. I believe the pops you are hearing were caused by me tapping my foot. La Catedral is also 3 movements, but was recorded as one larger piece. If you like faster, more technical work listen to that entire recording. The last movement starts to cook. there is also the voice of the head of SCCC's music department at the end of the Waltz. Again my apoligies. In any event, I’m diligently working on new recordings, and I’m hopeing I’ll be able to post them within a month.I'm mainly using this as a motivation tool for myself, but feel free to post comments, suggestions, or just whatever you'd like. It's my music site and home for all my friends. It's also a way to keep you guys posted on what I've been up to musically, and otherwise. I'm working on alot of music at the moment, but if you have any suggestion or dare I say...Requests...lol. Post em. I'm not promising anything, but if I have the time and willpower I'll learn it and post it.So, Thank You for visiting my site. Do tell me what you think of the music, and continue to ROCK OUT any way you see fit. Air guitar is great if you haven't learned to play yet ;)---------------------------------------------------------- --------Well, do to insomnia, I've decided to present you all with a small bio on each composer, and a few links to web sites with more information on them if they interest you. Ok...not so small bios, and the links...well...I can't make em work, but cut and paste should work. Sorry :(Augustin Barrios - La CatedralAgustín Pío Barrios (also known as Agustín Barrios Mangoré) (born May 5, 1885 in San Juan Bautista de las Misiones, Paraguay; died August 7, 1944 in Salvador, El Salvador) was a Paraguayan guitarist and composer, who has been called by John Williams to be the greatest guitarist/composer of allWhen he was a child, Barrios began to develop a love for music and literature, two areas that were very important to his family. Barrios would eventually speak two languages (Spanish and Guarani), and read three more (English, French and German).Barrios began to show an interest in musical instruments, particularly the guitar, before he reached his teens. He went to Asunción in 1901, at the age of thirteen, to attend a university (Colegio Nacional de Asuncion) with a scholarship in music, thus becoming one of the youngest university students in Paraguayan history. Apart from his studies in the college's music department, Barrios was also well appreciated by members of the college's mathematics, journalism and literature departments.After leaving college, Barrios dedicated his life to music and writing poems. He composed more than 300 songs for which he would first write the lyrics and then the guitar accompaniment. Barrios made several friends during his multiple trips across South America. He was known for giving his friends and fans signed copies of his poems. Because of that, there are several different versions of his poetical works which have surfaced across South America, other areas of Latin America and the United States. Many current collectors warn potential buyers to be careful when they come across a poem reportedly autographed by Barrios.Barrios was famed for his phenomenal performances, both live and on gramophone recordings — the first classical guitar music ever committed to disk. For some years, it was his habit to perform in concert in traditional Paraguayan dress (he was partly of Guarani origin), assuming the persona of Nitsuga Mangoré (Nitsuga being Agustin spelled backwards).His works were largely late-Romantic in character, despite his having lived well into the twentieth century. Many of them are also adaptations of or are influenced by South American and Central American folk music. Very many of them are of a virtuosic nature.The Bach-inspired La Catedral (1921) is often considered to be his most impressive work, even winning the approval of Andrés Segovia, who otherwise seemed to have little regard for his compositions. The posthumous rise in Barrios' critical stock, both as composer and player, is seen by some to have come at the expense of Segovia, formerly an untouchable icon of the instrument.Barrios died and was buried in the Cementerio de Los Ilustres in San Salvador, El Salvador on August 7, 1944.Barrios is still revered in Paraguay, where he is seen as one of the greatest musicians of all time by many. His works have been championed by John Williams, among others, as some of the greatest in the classical guitar repertoire. Williams has said of Barrios: "As a guitarist/composer, Barrios is the best of the lot, regardless of ear. His music is better formed, it's more poetic, it's more everything! And it's more of all those things in a timeless way. So I think he's a more significant composer than Sor or Giuliani, and more significant composer — for the guitar — than Villa-Lobos."Many other guitarists have recorded music by Barrios, including Sila Godoy, David Russell, Sharon Isbin, Berta Rojas, Abel Carlevaro, Barbosa-lima, Eduardo Fernández, César Amaro, Li Jie, Laurindo Almeida, Antigoni Goni, Iakovos Kolanian, Wulfin Lieske, Angel Romero, Enno Voorhorst and many other guitar players around the world. In 1974, Jesus Benites Reyes a Peruvian guitarist who lived in Mexico, was the rediscoverer of Barrios and is considered by the Barrios students as "the Last Mangorean". In 2007, a Double Compact Disc with the best of A. Barrios played by Jesus Benites was released only in Mexico and Japan. These recordings, according to students of Barrios, are better and more sensitive than the John Williams interpretations.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agust%C3%ADn_Ba rriosNikita Koshkin - Usher WaltzNikita Koshkin (born February 28, 1956) is a classical guitarist and composer born in Moscow. His early influences included Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, as well as rock music. As with those composers his music is characterised by rhythmic appeal, immediacy and wide range of colours, and well-thought-out dramatic content.Koshkin first came to prominence with his suite "The Prince's Toys," completed in 1980 and first performed by the Czech-born guitarist Vladimir Mikulka. It depicts the fairytale world of a child in which his toys come to life and, eventually, abduct him to some other dimension. The suite incorporates numerous sound-effects on the guitar to paint images: the so-called 'snare drum' effect, for example, created by holding down crossed B and E (or low-E and A)strings with the left hand, to imitate the drums of toy soldiers. Other extended techniques include scraping the strings with the fingernails; a large variety of percussive effects; 'playing' the strings between the tuning heads and nut, similar to the 3rd bridge technique, or the knotted sections of the strings on the bridge; 'hammer-ons', where the left hand fingers suddenly depress the string against the fingerboard without the intervention of the right hand; and so on.Koshkin's most celebrated guitar work is "Usher-Waltz," a piece inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe story The Fall of the House of Usher. Cast in a single movement, it is a motoric waltz whose careering harmonic progression around A minor threatens, and ultimately succeeds, in tearing the music apart. Its climax is an extraordinarily effective sequence of pounded right-hand chords, 'Bartok pizzicato' (where the strings are deliberately snapped back against the fingerboard), and then ghostly harmonics. Like much of Koshkin's work it has an immediate appeal to a wide audience who are both astonished at the visceral impact of the piece, and at the range of sounds coaxed from the guitar, which sounds "bigger than it really is".His set of variations "The Porcelain Tower" is another substantial and rewarding work for listeners, and for players of good intermediate or advanced standard.Besides writing works for solo guitar, Koshkin has composed guitar-ensemble music as well; in addition to numerous pieces for guitar duo, he has written two works for guitar quartet: Changing the Guard (1994), and Suite for Four Guitars (composed for the Georgia Guitar Quartet, 2007).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Koshkin