Fisk, Eliot (Hamilton)

(b Philadelphia, 10 Aug 1954). American guitarist. His teachers

included not only Andrs Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia and Alivio Diaz,
but also the harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Albert Fuller at
Yale, where he founded the guitar department and where he
earned his BA (1976) and MM (1977). He made his solo dbut in
1976 at Alice Tully Hall, New York, and in 1980 won the
International Classical Guitar Competition in Gargnano, Italy. His
London dbut, at the Wigmore Hall, was in 1984. He taught at the
Hochschule fr Musik in Cologne, 19829, and in 1989 was
appointed to the Salzburg Mozarteum. He has appeared frequently
in solo recitals, as an orchestral soloist and in chamber music. In
the tradition of his mentor, Andrs Segovia, Fisk has expanded the
repertory of the guitar through his own transcriptions, which include
works by Bach (the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin),
Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini (the 24 Caprices) and
Scarlatti. His playing is marked by a boldly personal interpretive
sense and a prodigious ease of technique. In contemporary
repertory he is especially noted as an exponent of the works of
Berio and George Rochberg.
THOMAS F. HECK