In this lecture, Stephen Goss, Jonathan Leathwood, and Stanley Yates discuss Improvisation as a Way of Knowing: Towards a New Pedagogy of Notated Repertoire

Stephen Goss
Stephen Goss’s music receives hundreds of performances worldwide each year. It has been recorded on over 80 CDs by more than a dozen record labels, including EMI, Decca, Telarc, Virgin Classics, Naxos, and Deutsche Grammophon. His output embraces multiple genres: orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and solo pieces.

Stephen Goss is Chair of Composition at the University of Surrey (UK), Director of the International Guitar Research Centre, and a Professor of Guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He was born in Wales on 2nd February 1964.

Jonathan Leathwood
Jonathan Leathwood was born in 1970 and has come to Denver from his native England. His first visit to the Lamont School of Music (at DU) was in 1996, when he spent the Spring Quarter as visiting guitar instructor at the invitation of Ricardo Iznaola, then on sabbatical. Recently Denver University awarded him its Artist’s Diploma, the first time they have made this award in individual performance, and made him the first recipient of the Ricardo Iznaola Guitar Scholarship. Jonathan is also guitar instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

He has a PhD from the University of Surrey and a Bachelor of Music from King’s College London. He was later invited back to King’s to teach Music Analysis and Techniques of Musical Composition, before eventually moving to the United States in 1998. His principal teachers in guitar have been Gordon Crosskey, Richard Wright, Paul Galbraith, Ricardo Iznaola and the pianist and conductor George Hadjinikos.

Stanley Yates
British-born guitar virtuoso Stanley Yates has been delighting audiences for two decades with his unique blend of eclectic program­ming and refined, expressive  musicianship. Performing to wide critical and audience acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, he has been praised for his “transcendent interpreta­tions” (Fort Worth Star Telegram) and “musical instinct and brilliant technique” (Suonare, Italy), and has been described as “one of an elite breed of guitarists” (Classical Guitar, England).

Now a resident of the United States, he cur­rently directs the guitar program at Austin Peay State University, home of Tennessee’s Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts.