International Guitar Night: Lulo Reinhardt, Debashish Bhattacharya, Luca Stricagnoli, Christiyan Dozza

“One of the most important showcases for contemporary finger-stylists.” – San Fransisco Chronicle

International Guitar Night, North America’s premier mobile guitar festival, has featured the best performing guitar composers from around the world since 1995. Each tour, IGN founder Brian Gore invites a new cast of guitar luminaries to join him for special evenings of solos, duets and quartets that highlight the virtuosity and diversity within the world of acoustic guitar. Since the beginning, audiences have cherished the friendly informal ambiance of the performances. Participants have relished the chance IGN affords to express reverence for one another, and to collaborate rather than compete with one another.

Gypsy jazz legend Lulo Reinhardt will replace Brian as guest host for International Guitar Night’s 2017 installment. Lulo will be joined by three dynamic musicians: Italy’s innovative contemporary guitarist Luca Stricagnoli; brilliant young Brazilian composaer/performer Chrystian Dozza, and India’s ground-breaking slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya. Luca’s inventive “tapping” techniques have garnered over 7 million views on YouTube. Chrystian has garnered many prestigious awards as one of Brazil’s leading young guitarists. Debashish has developed a unique technique for playing classical Indian music on the slide guitar and collaborated with musicians from around the world.

Luca Stricagnoli was born in 1991 in Varese, Italy. At the age of ten, he began playing classical guitar at the age of 10 but soon stopped. After rekindling his passion for the instrument in his teens, he taught himself new and original playing styles, which included performances with different instruments. He also developed non-conventional ways to play the guitar. In 2003, Luca’s videos became an online sensation, with tens of millions of views In addition to public acclaim, he began attracting major attention from famous guitar players all around the world. Now at 23, Luca is requested to perform all over the world.

Chrystian Dozza is one of the leading lights of the new generation of Brazilian instrumental musicians, a brilliant young guitarist/composer whose talents have been widely displayed and rewarded He has three recorded CDs and won many important contests for both performance and composition. Besides performing as a solo artist, Chrystian also plays with a chamber music group, Quaternaglia Guitar Quartet, and with the guitar trio Trio Opus 12 alongside Paulo Porto Alegre and Daniel Murray. Chrystian Dozza is also a guitar teacher at EMESP – Escola de Música do Estado de São Paulo.

Debashish Bhattacharya was born in Kolkata and started learning Indian music from his parents before he learned the alphabet. In his childhood he mastered many Indian classical instrumental styles as well as vocal music from different musical teachers in Calcutta. He became a disciple and student of Brij Bhushan Khabra, the father of Indian classical guitar, for 10 years, and also trained under Ajoy Chakraborty, the eminent Indian vocalist and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Debashish gave his first guitar recital at the age of four in a public concert broadcast on All India Radio. In his twenties, he evolved a unique style of playing guitar, synthesizing selected features of various other instruments such as the Veena, Sitar, Sarod and Kannur into an innovative new instrument based on an acoustic F hole guitar but also including additional melody strings, sympathetic strings, and chikari (drone) strings. He was awarded the President of India award at the age of 21.

Lulo Reinhardt, the gifted nephew of gypsy-jazz legend Django Reinhardt, began studying guitar with his father Bawo, also a famous musician. At twelve, he played in the Mike Reinhardt Sextet and later co-founded a group called “Django Reinhardt and the Heartbreakers” in tribute to his uncle. In 1991, he founded “I Gitanos” with his father and his cousin Dege and has also played with Toto and Marta Glenn and played at the music festival “Rock gegen Hass”(Rock against Hate) and at a concert in aid of the north African Sahouri in the city of Tinduf, Algeria. While rooted in his family’s traditions, his work as a composer and guitarist has also taken him to southern Spain in search of flamenco roots and to South America, exploring various musical styles of Latin Jazz.