A musician of the very top order!The AustralianAs Duke Ellington would have said, he is an artist beyond category.Fanfare Magazine, USAFartach-Naini stunned the audience with superb technical finesse.Reutlinger Nachrichten, GermanyVirtuoso with a flourish of fine feeling at his fingertips!Nordsee-Zeitung Bremerhaven, Germany
German guitarist Oliver Fartach-Naini is an exceptionally versatile guitarist who tours internationally from his base in Australia where he teaches at the University of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music. A student of American guitarist-composer Laurie Randolph, his colourful career has featured many innovative projects with which he has delighted audiences the world over.
Testament to his versatility is his eclectic portfolio of collaborative projects with well over a hundred world premiere performances of new works which composers such as Carlo Domeniconi (Italy), Richard Charlton (Australia), Anne Cawrse (Australia), Ludger Vollmer (Germany), Ian Seaborn (Australia), Geonyong Lee (South Korea), Jaime Zenamon (Brazil) and Máximo Diego Pujol (Argentina) have written for him and his ensembles.
To date he has released 11 CDs including 7 different chamber music formations for the German Labels Deutsche Grammophon, Kreuzberg Records, Acoustic Music Records as well as Credia International (Universal) and Ethnoclassics.
His latest recording is a solo album of four suites and pays tribute to the rich musical traditions of the Americas. Hector Ayala’s well-known Serie Americana as a milestone in this tradition is here complemented by Máximo Diego Pujol’s more recent Seis revelaciones alongside Richard Charlton’s Suite Latina and Máximo Diego Pujol’s Suite Adelaires, which were both composed for Oliver Fartach-Naini in 2006 and 2014 respectively.
Another collaboration on his mission to expand the guitar’s repertoire is the album Canto Antigo – a compilation of new folk song arrangements by Vincent Lindsey-Clark (England), Laurie Randolph (USA), Stephen Whittington (Australia), Jaime Zenamon (Brazil) and Richard Charlton (Australia), which he recorded with violinist Zia Hyun-Su Shin and guitarist Lee Song-Ou for Credia Classics (Universal Music) in 2015. The Persian Art Music CD Didar – Live in Berlin with Majid Derakhshani (Composition, Tar, Voice), Thea Nielsen (Flute) and Amir Abbas Zare (Daf) is another one of his ventures discovering new horizons. His Deutsche Grammophon recording of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise in Ludger Vollmer’s arrangement for viola (Richard Yongjae O’Neill) and two guitars topped the South Korean classical charts for three months after its release in early October 2007. Further key collaborations include projects with Korean guitarist Lee Song-Ou, Australian clarinettist Peter Handsworth and his Berlin based quintet Tango Concertante.
The German publisher Edition Margaux created the Collection Oliver Fartach-Naini, for which he published Ludger Vollmer’s guitar duo Set of Dreams. His standing as an educator has seen him selected as the repertoire consultant for the 2011 AMEB classical guitar syllabus, which entailed the publication of 7 graded and edited repertoire books with performance notes and the compilation of a graded 1000-work repertoire list for the AMEB’s manual of syllabuses.
Oliver Fartach-Naini holds degrees from the University of the Arts Berlin (Performance & Pedagogy), the Academy of Music and Theatre ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ in Leipzig (Music Performance) and was awarded his PhD from the University of Adelaide, where at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, he currently serves as Associate Director of Postgraduate Programs and director of the classical guitar program.
Oliver Fartach-Naini endorses LaBella Strings.