KUDIRKA, Michael

Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “the excellent guitarist in Henze’s unsettled score” and by Classical Guitar Magazine as “a leading proponent of new directions in classical guitar music”, Michael Kudirka is among the most committed, daring, and diversely talented of the current generation of virtuoso guitarists. An avid and long-time advocate of cutting-edge new music, Kudirka has maintained a close collaboration with Los Angeles-based composer Jeffrey Holmes since 2002, and a retrospective album of Holmes’s microtonal guitar works has been released by MicroFest Records (USA) in 2019. In the same year Kudirka also released the world-premiere recording of Bryan Johanson’s epic album-length composition 13 Ways of Looking at 12 Strings with Eric Benzant-Feldra on Les Productions d’OZ (Canada).

In November, 2017 Michael Kudirka completed his third production run of Thomas Adès's The Exterminating Angel at The Metropolitan Opera of New York, following performances at the Salzburger Festspiele (Austria) and The Royal Opera House (UK). Kudirka worked personally with Adès on the composer’s first-ever music written for guitar, and a DVD of The Met's Fall 2017 production will be released by Deutsche Grammophon. Kudirka has also collaborated with 2017 MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Award Winner Yuval Sharon in his production of Veronika Krausas’s chamber opera The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth.

Michael Kudirka performs around the globe as a recitalist and chamber musician, and has appeared at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (China), Darmstadt Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik (Germany), Le Chappelle Historique du Bon Pasteur (Montreal), Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto), Conservatorio de Las Rosas (Mexico), Ono Guitar School (Japan), Palace of Fine Arts (San Francisco), Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), Zipper Recital Hall (Los Angeles), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Flatfile Galleries (Chicago), Lincoln Recital Hall (Portland), and many others.  He has performed at numerous festivals and guitar societies including the 2011 Guitar Foundation of America Convention, Portland Guitar Festival, American Guitar Society, Jacaranda – Music at the Edge, Pacific Standard Time’s Stravinsky Retrospective, New Mexico Guitar Festival, Grand Canyon Guitar Society, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Sunday’s Live”, American Composers Forum, EUROMicroFest, Seattle Classical Guitar Society, Northwest Guitar Society, Other Minds 8, and Music of Changes.

He has taught at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, California Institute of the Arts, University of Southern California, Interlochen Arts Academy, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He is currently a faculty member at Arkansas State University.

Michael Kudirka is sponsored by D’Addario and Augustine strings.