CANBERRA guitarist Matt Withers, one of the “Brew Guitar Duo,” along with composer guitarist Bradley Kunda, as he wrote to CityNews from north-eastern New South Wales of the duo’s recent trip to the Tyalgum Festival of Classical Music.

Withers  tells us that Brew and also the Barton-Garcia duo performed to a full house at the Tyalgum Town Hall on Saturday night. The world premier of a work commissioned for the festival, “The Green Cauldron” by Kunda was very well received.  Written for Brew, with William Barton on didge, Anthony Garcia on 12-string guitar and Teije Hylkema on cello, it seemed to go down well with the audience and was followed by a blend of Spanish, Latin-American and Australian works to close the concert.

Brew also  performed the title track from their  second disc, “Landscape,”  originally by Robert Davidson, but “de-ranged” down from guitar & string quartet to just two guitars. In Tyalgum, however, they  collaborated again with William Barton, who added the  unique sounds of the didgeridoo to the melodies,  of “Landscape,”  drawing from influences of the nearby Glasshouse Mountains of Southern Queensland.

Other Canberra artists invited to the festival were harpist Alice Giles and pianist Arnan Wiesel.

It’s not a familiar festival to most Canberrans, but, master guitar teacher Timothy Kain assured CityNews,   it is one of Australia’s finest.