Music / A Guitar Trek Taster, Guitar Trek. At Wesley Music Centre, July 6.  Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN.

The Mansfield Room at the Wesley Music Centre was packed out for Guitar Trek and well it might be.

Not only is it a group with strong Canberra connections, but it is also a superb interpreter of a sometimes eclectic range of music. Some of which you might be surprised to hear played by a guitar group.

Led by Tim Kain with Minh Le Hoang, Callum Henshaw and Matt Withers, this supremely focused quartet worked its way through a varied program.

Gorgeous Albeniz and de Falla, the Gypsy Kings and the Cape Verdian Bau might be expected, but Richard Charlton’s tart and evocative pieces from his Tails in Cold Blood and three of Nigel Westlake’s bright fish from his Six Fish stood out as excellent contrasts to the richness of the Spaniards.

Surprises came in the form of an intense, small-scale interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers and a piece called Pachelbel’s Loose Canon. This last was a very funny rearrangement of Pachelbel (which is in danger of being done to death if it’s not dead already) by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet that involved excursions into the styles of other composers.

The sense of humour in Kain’s introductions and the occasional interjections from other members of the group kept the evening running along happily as did the varied array of differing guitar types that were brought into some of the pieces.

Guitar Trek generously came back for two lovely encores, a melancholy arrangement of Streets of London by fellow guitarist John Williams, then an even more melancholy piece in the form of the Beatles’ Elenor Rigby, both gorgeously done.

No wonder the concert was full.