A
novel approach to recording an album of solo guitar music, the 2009
CD release of The Fifth Row: An Acoustic Tour Of Historic Theaters
finds guitarist Stuart Weber recording an albums
worth of new music from the stages of some of the legendary old movie
/ music hall theaters of the Northern Rockies. Being based in Montana,
Weber takes listeners on a guided tour of some of the historic old
time theaters constructed in the 1920s and 30s in Montana,
Utah, Idaho and Colorado. For these concert stage recordings, Weber
would be asleep by 7pm, wake up at midnight and start recording on
the stages of the empty theaters at 3AM. From his amazing liner notes,
Weber adds, While theaters may have been designed with acoustic
excellence in mind, they were built long before the rumble of heavy
truck traffic. If my recordings were to succeed, it would have to
be while the town slept. In the ghostlike quietude of these
historic old theaters, performing alone, Weber recorded a number of
classical favorites mixing in several new original tunes. Few guitarists
today are as adept as Weber when it comes to revisiting classical
masters like Telemann, Bartók and Dvožák and when combined
with his own inventive Americana approach to solo guitar music, Webers
latest CD establishes a new standard in guitar excellence. Webers
notes on making this unique CD are a revelation and the detailed CD
booklet is filled with gorgeous color pictorials and descriptions
of each of these historic, fascinating old American theaters. As if
summing up his emotions recording in these nearly forgotten music
palaces from yesteryear, The Fifth Row fittingly closes
out with Webers solo guitar transcription of Samuel Wards
1882 composition America The Beautiful, recorded at the
Ellen Theatre in Webers hometown of Bozeman, Montana. www.BridgerArtists.com