Delpriora is currently Chair of the Guitar Department at the Manhattan School of Music, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. Mark is also on the faculty of The Juilliard School, where he teaches guitar studies. He studied guitar with Rolando Valdés-Blain and later with Manuel Barrueco. He studied theory/composition in his early teens with Roland Trogan and later with Giampaolo Bracali. Mr. Delpriora has recorded for Koch International Classics, Soundspells, Philips, Tzadik, and CRI. In addition, he has recorded 6 CDs with flutist Laurel Zucker on Cantilena Records.
As a performer, the New York Times wrote after his debut: "The first notes of Mark Delpriora's guitar recital established him as a musician of authority. In a little Mozart transcription by Julian Bream he showed a rare feeling for the specific gravity of a Mozartean phrase, for the inevitability of its rise and fall. Delpriora is a guitarist to be reckoned with"
One of the few students chosen to participate in masterclasses by Andrés Segovia, Delpriora has performed and championed music written for, but rarely played by, Segovia, known as The Segovia Archives. The collection is published by Berben Edizioni Musicali and edited by Angelo Gilardino. Angelo Gilardino wrote after hearing Delpriora play this music: “His playing is very fluent, effortless, elegant and extremely refined, and his view of the music he performs is sophisticated, still direct and transparent".
He has performed and taught master classes in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, Italy and the United States and has been recognized with many awards, including the inaugural Andrés Segovia Award for Outstanding Performance given by the Manhattan School of Music with Segovia in attendance, the Beard’s Fund Award, and the Artists International Distinguished Artist Award, and by grants, including a United Nations Travel Grant and grants from Meet the Composers and the Cooper Institute for the Arts and Humanities. In addition, he has performed at the Lake Placid Chamber Music Festival, Piccolo Spoleto, Stetson University Guitar Festival, Rutgers University Summerfest, Eastman Guitarfest and the Summit Music Festival; and with the New York Contemporary Music Band, New Music Consort, Joffrey Ballet Orchestra, and the Washington Bach Consort. More recently Mark Delpriora has been performing on the baroque guitar, giving his first all-baroque guitar recital at William Paterson University's 2007 Guitar Fest.
His compositions have been published by Bèrben Edizioni Musicali (the 50-minute Sonata No.3, Sonata No.2, Elegia per Basil Keiser), Editions Orphée (Tango Caffè Carciofo, 10 Short Studies in Kaleidoscope,Creation Fugue, Variations on a Theme of Sor), and Guitar Arts Publishing (Four Images after a poem by e.e. cummings), MelBay (Tambu Fantasy). All of the above works, particularly the Sonatas, are contrapuntally complex, dramatically shaped and technically challenging. Sonata no.3 has become particularly renowned and is the subject of a chapter in Manuale di storia della chitarra. 2: La chitarra nel ventesimo secolo by Gianni Nuti.
Delpriora's most recent composition is the 35 minute set of variations on Fernando Sor's Opus 24, #1. The scope of this work is unprecedented in the guitar repertoire, at twice the length of Britten's Nocturnal the closest equivalent must be found in the piano repertoire e.g. Rzewski's variations The People United Will never be Defeated. Delpriora writes: "In the tradition of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s 'Variations à travers les siècles', Astor Piazzola’s 'Histoire du Tango' and Argento’s song cycle 'Letters from Composers', I have taken an historical view of composition for my 'Variations on a Theme by Sor'. This new set of variations follows Sor’s little Menuet in c minor op. 24 N° 1 as it makes its epic journey across time and space through the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth century. During its travels, the theme meets and pays its respects to the godfathers of nineteenth century music and as a result is irrevocably transformed". In a sense, this work can be said to be a musical example of Metahistorical romance. The last page of the published work contains an imaginary interview between Delpriora and the nineteenth century musicologist François-Joseph Fétis.
Two of the variations (12 and 14) served as the set piece for the 2011 GFA competition.
His Elegia and several of his 10 Short Studies, the seventh of which is 9 seconds in duration, demonstrate a particular interest in very short forms with an accompanying intimate emotional sensitivity.
The classical guitar, also known as Spanish guitar, is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor of the modern steel-string acoustic and electric guitars, both of which use metal strings. Classical guitars derive from instruments such as the lute, the vihuela, the gittern, which evolved into the Renaissance guitar and into the 17th and 18th-century baroque guitar. Today's modern classical guitar was established by the late designs of the 19th-century Spanish luthier, Antonio Torres Jurado.
Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña was a Spanish virtuoso classical guitarist. Many professional classical guitarists were either students of Segovia or students of Segovia's students. Segovia's contribution to the modern-romantic repertoire included not only commissions but also his own transcriptions of classical or baroque works. He is remembered for his expressive performances: his wide palette of tone, and his distinctive musical personality, phrasing and style.
Julian Alexander Bream was an English classical guitarist and lutenist. Regarded as one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century, he played a significant role in improving the public perception of the classical guitar as a respectable instrument. Over the course of a career that spanned more than half a century, Bream also helped revive interest in the lute.
Miguel Llobet Solés was a classical guitarist, born in Barcelona, Spain. Llobet was a renowned virtuoso who toured Europe and America extensively. He made well known arrangements of Catalan folk songs for the solo guitar, made famous arrangements for the guitar of the piano compositions of Isaac Albéniz, arrangements immortalized by Andrés Segovia, and was also the composer of original works.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer, pianist and writer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States and became a film composer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next fifteen years. He also wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.
Dušan Bogdanović is a Serbian-born American composer and classical guitarist. He has explored musical languages which are reflected in his style today: a synthesis of classical, jazz, and ethnic music. As a soloist and in collaboration with other artists, he has toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, and the U.S. He has taught at the University of Southern California, San Francisco Conservatory, and the Geneva University of Music.
Angelo Gilardino was an Italian composer, guitarist, and musicologist.
Antonio José Martínez Palacios, professionally known as Antonio José, was a Spanish composer. Maurice Ravel apparently said of Antonio José: "He will become the Spanish composer of our century", however, his music lay forgotten until the 1980s.
Dimitri Illarionov is a Germany-based Russian classical guitarist. He is a winner of the Guitar Foundation of America Competition and Francisco Tárrega Guitar Competition.
Alirio Díaz was a Venezuelan classical guitarist and composer, considered one of the most prominent composer-guitarists of South America and an eminent musician. He studied with Andrés Segovia, and gave concerts all over the world.
Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar, known in Mexico as Manuel M. Ponce, was a Mexican composer active in the 20th century. His work as a composer, music educator and scholar of Mexican music connected the concert scene with a mostly forgotten tradition of popular song and Mexican folklore. Many of his compositions are strongly influenced by the harmonies and form of traditional songs.
Narciso Yepes was a Spanish guitarist. He is considered one of the finest virtuoso classical guitarists of the twentieth century.
Robert Phillips is an American classical guitarist.
Lucio Matarazzo is an Italian classical guitarist. Along with successful guitarists Julian Bream, Alirio Diaz and Alexandre Lagoya, he is a recipient of the prestigious Chitarra d'Oro in the category of Una Vita per la Chitarra awarded by the International Guitar Convention of Alessandria.
Carlo Carfagna is an Italian classical guitarist, author of many musical publications. His musical education took place at the Conservatory of Rome and Naples, under the guidance of Mario Gangi, and was subsequently a teaching colleague for many years at Santa Cecilia.
José Rey de la Torre was one of the most significant classical guitarists of the mid-twentieth century, and considered by many to be the father of "modern classical guitar technique".
Nicholas Goluses is a professor of classical guitar at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. Goluses has held the Andrés Segovia Chair at the Manhattan School of Music, as the founder and chair of that school's guitar department. He has recorded seven albums for Naxos including "Bach: Sonatas Transcribed for Guitar" and "Sor: Fantaisies / Progressive Studies." He is one of the only guitarists to have transcribed and recorded all three of Bach's violin sonatas. James Jolly in the Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 wrote that Goluses' Guitar Collection: Sor set "a benchmark for present-day guitarists.”
Lex Eisenhardt is a performer and recording artist on early plucked instruments, such as the vihuela, the baroque guitar, and the 19th-century Romantic guitar. He studied lute and guitar at the Utrecht Conservatory. In 1981 he was appointed professor of guitar and early plucked instruments at the Sweelinck Conservatorium. In the forefront of the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) on the guitar, Eisenhardt was the first to make several gramophone recordings with music by the Catalan composer Fernando Sor on a period instrument from the early 19th century. He has given solo recitals and lectures in many European countries, Australia, and the United States. Well-known guitarists such as Johannes Moller and Izhar Elias studied with him.
David Leisner is an American classical guitarist, composer and teacher whose activities include recording, arranging and writing about music. He has performed as a concert guitarist and as soloist with orchestras at international music festivals and venues including Carnegie Hall and the 92nd St. Y in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, Royce Hall in Los Angeles and the Guitar Foundation of America International Festival. His performances, compositions, recordings and research are credited with expanding the guitar repertoire through advocacy for neglected composers and music, newly commissioned works and original arrangements. American Record Guide critic Kenneth Keaton wrote, "Leisner is among the finest guitarists performing … He has a probing intellect, finding insights in music that most others miss, and delivering them with a virtuoso technique."
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