Pat Donohue’s Guitar Summit with Phil Heywood and Tim Sparks
Aug 1 | 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
$25.00 - $35.00
Fingerpicking Champions!
This trio of high powered guitar fingerpickers lights up the stage with blues, jazz, folk and original tunes, fresh picked and tangy. All three of these ace guitar players are National Fingerpicking Guitar Champions and it’s easy to see why. Bach to Beatles, Ellington to Elvis It’s a real six string extravaganza when these three champs meet.
Pat Donohue: Guitar
Phil Heywood: 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.
Phil Heywood plays fingerstyle guitar with a bluesy swing. Also, a bucketful of whatever it takes to turn an instrumental piece into an arresting lyrical narrative. His lucid playing encompasses the down-home rhythmic groove of a Mississippi John Hurt or Leadbelly. Additionally, he has the sheer fluidity and melodic flair of such contemporaries as Leo Kottke. The internationally renowned Kottke, in fact, once handpicked Heywood to tour and perform duets with him.
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