Power within Nature
Jotaro Nakano, Music Director
Ziggy & Miles, Guitar duo
Photo credit: Jiyang Chen
Tonya Wind Singer: Creation
Nigel Westlake: Toward Takayna (Concerto for 2 Guitars) (U.S. Premiere)
Ziggy and Miles, Guitar Duo
Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome, P.141
Benefiting Tunefoolery Music
About the Community Partner
2024 marks Tunefoolery Music’s thirtieth year of connecting music with mental health. Founded at a drop-in center in Cambridge MA for individuals with psychiatric disabilities, Tunefoolery began as a group of four musicians who performed 15 concerts for family, friends, and peers in their first year. Today, as a Boston-based nonprofit supported by the Mass Cultural Council and the MA Dept. of Mental Health, Tunefoolery has grown to 30 active musicians (age 25-85!) who play a variety of instruments and musical genres and benefit from the organization’s music education programs, performance opportunities, and supportive community. This past year, we performed over 400 gigs at hospitals, shelters, mental health centers, and nursing homes, providing music to audiences that typically lack access to live performances. We have increased our membership’s diversity and continued giving back to mental health units where some of our members were once patients. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we are proud to be member-led for the first time and are honored to be one of LSO’s Community Partners.
About the Soloists
Photo credit: Jiyang Chen
Ziggy & Miles, guitar duo
“Australian guitarist brothers making history” (The Age), Ziggy & Miles are two of their home country’s finest young musicians forging an international career. Their performances are known for their “deeply considered musicianship, immaculate care and superlative technique” (5MBS). Winners of the 2023 Susan Wadsworth Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the brothers have become the first guitar duo and second guitarists to receive this prestigious award in the organisation’s 63-year history.
Ziggy and Miles’ long-awaited new album, Sidekick, was recently released through Move Records, Australia’s longest running classical record label. The album features new works written for the brothers, their own “transfixingly beautiful” (Limelight) arrangement of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and works that have shaped their musical identity from Spain, Latin America, and Australia. The title track “Sidekick” is a character piece written for the brothers by award winning composer Katie Jenkins that ties this theme together. In Jenkins’ own words, “They make fun of each other but need each other, they compete with one another but are stronger together.”
With over 50 awards between them in guitar competitions and local music Eisteddfods across their home city of Melbourne, Ziggy and Miles proved their artistry as soloists and a duo from a young age. A selection of their early accolades includes major prizes in competitions hosted by the Guitar Foundation of America, the Adelaide International Guitar Festival, and the Melbourne Recital Center. Self-released in 2014, their debut album, Recollections, served as both a tribute to the music that inspired the brothers growing up, and as their first professional milestone to look back upon and ‘recollect’.
Ziggy and Miles are actively involved in community engagement and have a passion for providing education and music to people without access to live performances or high-quality music education. They have collaborated with organisations across Australia and the US including Melbourne Recital Centre, The Juilliard School, and Project: Music Heals Us. One highlight for the brothers was their Music Always tour, partnered with Melbourne Recital Centre. This 2-week 12-concert tour saw the brothers travelling across their home state of Victoria to aged care facilities, community centres, medical facilities, and psychiatric wards. Ziggy and Miles regard this as one of their most emotionally challenging yet rewarding experiences as musicians to date.
Ziggy and Miles are Artist diploma candidates at The Juilliard School under Multiple Grammy Winner, Sharon Isbin, where they are the first Australians and first guitar duo in the program’s 20-year history to be accepted. During both their master’s and Artist Diploma at Juilliard, the brothers received distinguished awards to assist their studies from Australian Foundations, including the American Australia Association, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, and Phonographic Performance Company of Australia.
Ziggy and Miles play guitars by Australian luthier Jim Redgate and play Savarez strings.
Explore the Program
Exchanges and ticket donations can be made up to 24 hours in advance of the originally ticketed concert date by emailing info@longwoodsymphony.org or calling 617-987-0100. We cannot guarantee the same seats will be available for the exchanged concert. Refunds will be offered if you are unable to exchange or donate. Subject to availability.
Discounts for groups of 10 or more are available. Please contact info@longwoodsymphony.org or call 617-987-0100 to arrange.
All programs are subject to change.