Australia has a distinguished modern history of classical guitarists and guitar groups with the likes of John Williams, Garteh Koch, the Grigoryan brothers and Timothy Kain’s Guitar Trek coming to mind. The Melbourne Guitar Quartet is another fine ensemble who have extended the place of the guitar in the concert hall as well as regards to repertoire. This new self-published disc wittily titled Blood Oath continues their unique approach not only in terms of instrumentation which sees a variety of instruments employed (bass, baritone and tenor, or requinto, guitars).

Melbourne Guitar Quartet

They refer to themselves and the instrumentation as a “guitar family” and this disc sees them further extending themselves from the likes of their acclaimed performances of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (originally conceived for Jazz great Pat Metheny and overdubs)...