Eli’s Portrait

“A lovely tribute to Canadian guitar giant” Apparently, this is the first “portrait” in a series of that will pay homage to illustri­ous guitar personalities of our time. Assad composed Eli’s Portrait to celebrate the 80th birthday of Eli Kassner, the beloved and influential Canadian guitar teacher (and one of the original classical guitar fes­tival promoters). Sergio Assad has chosen to compose the work based upon Kass­ner’s name, so using the alphabetical sys­tem of music notation in a recurring loop, Eli Kassner’s name comes out as EEB DAEEGED. This has all been done before of course, the most well-known being the Tonadilla upon the name of Andres Segovia by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Tedesco composed several pieces in this method, and it just so happened that Segovia’s name produced the best theme. Assad has struck lucky here also, as the recurring short theme based on Kassner’s name is memorable and attractive. The opening segment of the work has a slow, lyrical, and poignant character that makes it instantly likeable, and it is at the end of this section that we first encoun­ter the Kassner theme. The mid-section livens up with flights of scales and arpeg­gios, above which snippets of the theme and related motifs also appear. After this comes a recapitulation of the opening slow section, before the work concludes with a tender and emotive short coda. The technical standard is about Grade 8/advanced. -Steve Marsh (Classical Guitar Magazine)