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The International Conservatory of Music Media Reviews
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The Aurora Guitar Quartet gave a charming performance of Mozart's overtures to "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Magic Flute" at Westmoreland Church on Saturday, drawing out the scintillating color and contrapuntal play of voices in the music.
Bizet's "Carmen" Suite suited the quartet even more handily, its Spanish-inspired material well paired with instruments of centuries-old Spanish pedigree. The arrangement (like the Mozart, uncredited in the program) drew considerable allure from flamenco strumming and castanet-like percussion created by fingernails on the guitars' sounding boards. More recent Latin music by Cuban-born Leo Brouwer, Brazilians Sergio Assad and Paulo Bellinati, Los Angeles-based Carlos Rafael Rivera and Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla provided a kaleidoscopic range of timbres and polyrhythmic evocations of dance. Of the group, Brouwer has the headiest reputation as a guitar composer, but his minimalist techniques sounded simplistic and awkwardly structured here, with programmatic titles mismatched with the actual music: Wooden sticks wedged between the strings for a steel-drum effect in "Cuban Landscape With Rumba" created a sound more Asian than Cuban, and evoked rain more tellingly than the bell tones and locomotive rhythms in "Cuban Landscape With Rain." -- Washington Post - Joe Banno - Monday, February 25, 2008; Page C05 
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