Pat Donohue’s Guitar Summit with Mike Dowling and Tim Sparks

Fingerpicking Champions!

Join Grammy winner Pat Donohue and fingerstyle guitar aces Mike Dowling and Tim Sparks for an evening of unforgettable guitar performances, great songs and a healthy dose of laughter from these three friends and musical dynamos. Blues, folk, jazz and other American music played by guitar masters in the beautiful Dunsmore Room. Fun!

Pat Donohue: Guitar

Mike Dowling: Guitar

Tim Sparks: Guitar

Tim Sparks has been redefining the acoustic guitar repertoire for decades. He won the National Fingerpicking Championship in 1993 with a ground-breaking arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Furthermore, Sparks is equally at home with country, blues, jazz or global music. Here, Sparks’s extraordinary ability has earned him an international reputation as one of the most innovative guitarists working today.

Performer, composer, instructor, session artist, inventor. Everything guitarist Mike Dowling does reflects his love for and mastery of the instrument that has been the focus of his life for over sixty years.

From swing to jazz to bottleneck blues to folk, Grammy-winning acoustic guitarist Pat Donohue plays it all with a flourish of artistry, melodic inspiration, and dazzling fretwork. The great Chet Atkins called Pat, a former National Fingerpicking Guitar Champion, one of the greatest finger pickers in the world today; Leo Kottke called his playing “haunting.”

Pat is one of the most listened-to finger pickers in the world. Millions of people (whether they’re aware of it or not) have enjoyed the amazing talents of Pat Donohue and the Prairie All-Stars. For years, they were welcomed into the homes of 3.5 million weekly listeners as members of the Guys All-Star Shoe Band on Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion.