Shift and Riff
Guitar Quartet
Eric Sessler
About
The piece was commissioned to celebrate the Curtis Institute guitar program; it’s a quartet because usually there are four students in the department,” he says. “Guitar I and IV are standard. Guitar II uses a capo at the first fret and Guitar III has the capo at the third. This allows the music to shift (and riff) between the sound worlds created by the three sets of open strings. However, for the Curtis performance, Xiabo playing guitar II tuned his entire guitar up a half step to avoid using the capo.
Performance
| Eric Sessler |
Shift and Riff |
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Duration
08:00 |
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Commissioning Year
2016 |
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Premiere
March 17, 2017 Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA |
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Recording Excerpt
May 7, 2024 Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA |
Artists
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Eric Sessler Composition
Eric Sessler received his Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School and his Bachelor of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He is a 1993 Curtis graduate, having studied composition with Samuel Adler, David Diamond, and Ned Rorem.
Dr. Sessler’s recent projects include music written for Anthony and Demarre McGill, a string quartet for the Dover Quartet, new works for guitarist Jason Vieaux, a flute concerto for Jeffrey Khaner with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and a duet for flute and guitar featuring Bonita Boyd and Nicholas Goluses at the National Flute Association Convention. He has received numerous awards, including the ASCAP Foundation Award, the Charles E. Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Theodore Presser Music Foundation Award; and grants from American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, and the Philadelphia Music Project. His music is recorded on ACA Digital Recording, New Focus Recordings, and Musicaphon Records, and is published by Silver Sun Press, Verlag Neue Musik, and Les Productions d’OZ. Dr. Sessler’s Organ Concerto was featured on Opus 76—a showcase recording of the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ in Verizon Hall on the Kimmel Cultural Campus in Philadelphia with renowned organist Alan Morrison as soloist.
In addition to his work at Curtis, Dr. Sessler serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School’s pre-college division. Dr. Sessler joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1999.
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Ruqi Jiang Guitar
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Muxin Li Guitar
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Radomir Romashkov-Danilov Guitar
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Xingxing Yao Guitar
Xingxing Yao is a 19-year-old guitarist from Hangzhou, China. Xingxing started learning the guitar at age three with Li Le and Andres Hsieh. She entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2020, where she studies with David Starobin and Jason Vieaux, and is the Emilio Gravagno Fellow.
Xingxing has won multiple awards across Asia, including first prize in the Altamira Shanghai International Guitar Competition (youth division), second prize in the Taiwan International Guitar Festival, and second prize in the East End International Guitar Competition in Japan. At age 11, she was invited as the guest performer in world-renowned guitarist Alvaro Pierre’s concert at the Joy of Music Festival in Hong Kong.
During her study in the U.S., she has performed solo and chamber pieces in concerts held by the Philadelphia Guitar Society and the Village Trip Festival in New York City, and she joined and performed as a fellow in the Aspen Music Festival in 2025. Besides traditional guitar repertoire, Xingxing actively performs new music for guitar composed by Tania León, Mel Powell, Paul Lansky, William Bland, Mario Davidovsky, and Stephen Jaffe.
She has also participated in numerous master classes led by internationally renowned guitarists, including William Kanengiser, Aniello Desidero, Zoran Dukic, Marcin Dylla, Petra Poláčková, Franz Halasz, Christian Saggese, and Elena Papandreou.
Xingxing performs on guitars built by Steven Walter and Richard Bruné, and on an Altamira Vienna model 19th-century guitar.
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