Richard Falkenstein

Richard Falkenstein has performed on guitar and lute in Western New York as a soloist, as artist-in-residence, and with a wide variety of small ensembles, orchestras, and vocal groups such as the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chautauqua Opera Orchestra, and the Greater Buffalo Opera Company. He has toured extensively as a chamber musician throughout central and eastern United States, Ontario, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Poland, Russia, and France with the Buffalo Guitar Quartet and with mezzo-soprano Melissa Thorburn, performing in such venues as Rachmaninoff Hall (Moscow), Leningrad [St. Petersburg] Conservatory, Chopin Academy of Music (Warsaw), Teresa Carreño Theater (Caracas), and Petite Malmaison (Rueil-Malmaison, France) among others. His two recordings as a member of the Buffalo Guitar Quartet have received critical acclaim in American Record Guide, Fanfare, Guitar Player, and other publications.

His scholarly work includes publications about sixteenth-century lute music and the Beatles, and he is currently the editor of the Journal of the Lute Society of America. He has read papers concerning his academic work at meetings of the American Musicological Society and the International Musicological Society (Rome, Italy).

For over 25 years Richard Falkenstein has been a faculty member at Canisius University, where he has taught music history and guitar and where he is currently Chair of the Fine Arts Department. He has also served as a faculty member at the University at Buffalo, SUNY Fredonia, and Daemen College.

Awards

• Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship, University at Buffalo
• Prizewinner, Oswald Rantucci Guitar Competition (Buffalo, NY)
• Woodburn Fellowship, University at Buffalo
• Faculty Service Award, Canisius University

Publications

New Music for Four Guitars, Buffalo Guitar Quartet, New World Records, NW 384-2.

Gypsy’s Round, Buffalo Guitar Quartet, Centaur Records, CRC 2294.

Intabolatura di liuto di M. Francesco da Milano et Perino Fiorentino (Venice: Ant. Gardano, 1562), introduction and annotated index to facsimile edition (Geneva: Éditions Minkoff).

“Four Play With a Difference,” with John Zeis, Chapter 18 of The Beatles and Philosophy: Nothing You Can Think That Can’t Be Thunk (Chicago: Open Court Press).

“A Souvenir from the Veneto: Vincenzo Galilei’s First Book of Lute Tablatures (1563),” Journal of the Lute Society of America 45.