Biography

When Scott Kritzer finished the final chords of his highly-acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut he was hailed by the New York Times as:

“…intelligent and self-assured…with a sure technique and a musical sensitivity, he created an inner life in his playing, a thinking and caring musician.” Bernard Holland of the New York Times

Mr. Kritzer made yet another musical splash with debuts in London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall, Lutheran Hall and Sapporo, Japan. In 1996 Mr. Kritzer was chosen by Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield to represent the entire state of Oregon in a special performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

He has performed on series that have included Itzhak Perlman, Ivo Pogorelic, Cecelia Bartoli and the Emerson and KRONOS String Quartets.

Mr. Kritzer’s consummate commitment to technical excellence as the solid structure beneath an unparalleled sense of musicality has since brought him over a decade of accolades from audiences and critics alike, in concert halls in San Francisco, Frankfurt, Vancouver, B.C., Los Angeles, Sapporo, Washington, D.C., Munich, and New York. He has been featured in Japan’s Guitar Magazine, London’s Classical Guitar and Guitar International as well as in America’s Soundboard and Guitar Player magazines.

He has performed on series that have included Itzhak Perlman, Ivo Pogorelic, Cecelia Bartoli and the Emerson and KRONOS String Quartets.

A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mr. Kritzer studied with Michael Lorimer and Aaron Shearer and in master classes with Eliot Fisk, Leo Brouwer, Abel Carlevaro, Alirio Diaz, and David Russell. He also attended master classes taught by Luciano Pavorotti, Gustav Leonhardt, Yehudi Menhuin, and Fischer Diska, and worked privately with pianist Alicia de Laroccaha.

After graduation Mr. Kritzer was chosen as an assistant to Mr. Lorimer in a year-long master class held in North Carolina where he also gave a special performance for the late Andres Segovia.

Hailed a “champion of the living American composer”, David Maclaine, The Willamette Week, Mr. Kritzer has premiered newly commissioned works for guitar in virtually every major U.S. city.

“He possesses an uncanny ability to seek out and commission fresh, invigorating repertoire that he invest with both robust character and poetic nuance. Able to reveal insights without resorting to exaggeration, Kritzer’s guitar takes on all the riot and color of the modern life”, Neill Archer Roan, California Center for the Performing Arts.

He has also served as Artistic Director to one of America’s top contemporary chamber groups, The Third Angle New Music Ensemble.

Since 1996 Mr. Kritzer has teamed up with coloratura soprano and star of European Opera Janet Chvatal, Ms. Chvatal also performed the lead role of Christine in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera for two years in Vienna. Chvatal and Kritzer perform throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, transforming audiences with a romantic style.

Mr. Kritzer has also performed with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra as well with the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra, the Cascade Festival Orchestra and the Coos Bay Festival Orchestra.

“Kritzer took an assured approach in the popular Rodrigo concerto, [for guitar and orchestra] strumming the big chords for the whole hall to hear and biting into the Spanish rhythms. But nothing could equal his work in the dreamy second movement. Kritzer’s lyricism was golden. He refused to rush, letting the solo phrases hang deliciously in the air. Would that more musicians had his courage.” David Stabler, The Oregonian

Mr. Kritzer has recorded for Miramont Records including his Classical Guitar Christmas, and in duo with Ms. Chvatal on Songs of the Americas and In the Blue Hour in works for voice, guitar and orchestra.

“...a guitarist in the best modern American mold, clean and accurate in technique with a welcoming warmth and sensitivity to color...” Colin Cooper, Classical Guitar – London

Mr. Kritzer also maintains an active teaching schedule in Portland, Oregon where many of his past students have won regional, national and international guitar competitions and have gone on to attend such notable schools as The Julliard School, the Royal Conservatory of Music in London, the North Carolina School of the Arts and his alma mater, The San Francisco Conservatory of Music.