Jack Sanders

Performing Faculty, guitar
Email: sandersgtr@aol.com
Website
Expertise Profile

Soloist, chamber musician, pedagogue, and luthier, Jack Sanders’ performances have included the Sitka Summer Music Festival, Kapalua Music Festival of Hawaii, Arrowhead Bach Festival, and solo appearances with numerous orchestras, including the Illinois Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Santa Fe, Modesto Symphony, Orange County Chamber Orchestra and South Coast Symphony. He has performed with the St. Petersburg, Colorado, and Angeles string quartets, the vocal group I Cantori, and the contemporary chamber ensemble XTET. Radio appearances have included NPR’s nationally broadcast “West Coast Live.” The Luthier, a short documentary on Sanders' instrument building filmed by Benjamin Hoste, was screened at the Cinefamily Theater in Hollywood in July 2011. Watch here.

In 1984 Jack Sanders formed a duo with violinist Clayton Haslop which has since appeared at Guitar Foundation of America Festivals, Merkin Hall in New York, the Oregon Bach Festival and in concerts from Hawaii and Alaska to Maine. The Haslop/Sanders Duo has 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 Records and Townhall Records. A solo recording by Mr. Sanders featuring the Preludes of Ponce, Villa-Lobos and Carlevaro was released by Townhall Records in the Spring of 2000.

Mr. Sanders also performs with oboist Allan Vogel and flutist Janice Tipton in the Valencia Trio which has appeared at the International Music Festival of Costa Rica and the Sedona Chamber Music Festival.

Equally at home performing music of all periods, he gave the American premiere of Micio Mamiya’s Sacred Spells for Guitar. Works written for him include Anthony Plog’s Animal Ditties for guitar and narrator, Karl Kohn’s Soliloquy, Tripartita, Concords (violin/guitar), Colla Voce (viola/guitar), Joseph Brennan’s Five Preludes, and Frank Campo’s Two Studies (trumpet/guitar) which he has recorded for Crystal Records. In 1996 he gave the first performances of Las Folios D’España, a concerto by Louis Moyse and in January 1999 he gave the U.S. premiere of Raymond Luedeke’s Elemental Dances with the Colorado String Quartet.

The 2011-12 season included solo tours of Western Texas and Wyoming for the Piatigorsky Foundation, a performance of the Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the Claremont Symphony, and the premiere of the Concerto for Resonator Guitar and Orchestra by Gabriel Bolaños with the Mill Valley Philharmonic. Upcoming concerts for 2012-13 include tours of Arizona and New Mexico for the Piatigorsky Foundation, and several solo recitals.

A three-time full scholarship student of Oscar Ghiglia at the Banff Centre of Fine Arts in Canada, Sanders received his BFA and MFA degrees from California Institute of the Arts, studying there with Stuart Fox. He has been a member of the faculty of Pomona College since 1980. His students have been prizewinners in the 2012 Parkening Young Guitarist Competition, Tokyo International Guitar Competition and those sponsored by the Guitar Foundation of America, ASTA, Redlands Bowl, ARCO, KCET-TV, and the Ambassador Foundation.

An accomplished luthier, Sanders builds guitars and vihuelas, and has taught guitar building courses at California Institute of the Arts and Pomona College. Mr. Sanders has made baroque and 19th century guitars for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and UC Santa Barbara. Recently, Sanders built a matched pair of Baroque guitars for the Waller/Maxwell duo, on the faculty of Northwestern University and a baroque guitar for the UCLA Early Music Ensemble.  His Essays on Playing the Guitar are a popular feature in Soundboard, the quarterly journal of the Guitar Foundation of America.