Guitarist brothers Mark and Edgar Cruz will present a concert at Wimberley United Methodist Church on February 23, at 5:30 p.m.
The brothers are combining their talents to raise money for the fourth annual Hill Country Guitar Festival at Texas State University. The festival is a two-day event geared toward guitar ensembles from public schools and colleges from Texas and surrounding states. The concert is free but donations are accepted and will benefit the festival, which will be held on March 28 and 29 at Texas State University. For more information about the festival, visit music. txst.edu/events/guitarfestival.
Mark and Edgar grew up in Oklahoma and both graduated with guitar performance degrees from Oklahoma City University. Sons of an accomplished Mariachi musician, they followed in the footsteps of their father who spent his life entertaining others with his guitar.
After finishing college, Edgar began pursuing a career in entertainment. During his career, he was a prize winner at the Winfield International Fingerpicking competition and has been a regular featured performer at the Chet Atkins festival in Nashville every year since 1995. Currently, he plays over 300 times a year. For ten years, Edgar was named the Top Performing Artist and Best Acoustic Guitarist by the Oklahoma Gazette. He has also been inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and named a Distinguished Alumni by OCU. Edgar has produced 19 CDs and is best known for his acoustic rock transcriptions. His arrangement of “Bohemian Rhapsody” has over 20 million views on Youtube.
Mark has been a first place winner at the Winfield International Fingerpicking Competition in Kansas and the Indiana State Fingerstyle Competition. He is a published composer who has produced many original solo CDs and has been featured in several Texas guitar festivals. As a composer, Mark has received several commissions and many of his compositions have been performed by guitarists around the globe and are frequently featured on the internationally- syndicated radio program, Classical Guitar Alive. He has been a guitar professor at Texas State University, where he received his masters degree, for the past 26 years. In addition to his classical performances, Mark plays regularly with jazz or rock duos, trios and bands.
Because the brothers live in separate states with separate schedules, seeing them together in concert is a rare event. This is their first opportunity to perform together in the Hill Country.
The Wimberley United Methodist Church is located at 1200 County Rd 1492.
