Cuban guitar legend Marco Tamayo will perform a recital with Tucson Guitar Society on Saturday, Nov. 11, at UA’s Holsclaw Hall.

Tucson Guitar Society is hosting a Cuban guitar legend in a recital on Saturday, Nov. 11, at the University of Arizona’s Holsclaw Hall.

A few miles away at Catalina Foothills High School, Tucson conductor László Veres will lead his Arizona Symphonic Winds in its annual “Salute to Veterans” concert on Saturday, Veterans Day. This is the 38th year for the concert, which celebrates those who served or are serving the country in uniform.

Marco Tamayo rarely tours the U.S., which makes his recital with Tucson Guitar Society on Saturday even more special. The Cuban-born classical guitarist virtuoso’s last Tucson appearance was via Zoom during the pandemic, when the Guitar Society and UA’s Bolton Guitar Studies program collaborated on a streamed conversation on Tamayo’s approach to musical and technical fundamentals of classical guitar.

On Saturday, he will perform Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro and Tchaikovsky’s “Valse” sentimentale on a program that also includes 18th-century Spanish composer Fernando Sor’s “Grand” solo and 20th-century Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios Mengore’s “Vals.”

The second half of Tamayo’s concert includes Grieg’s “Air, IV,” from the “Holberg Suite” and works by Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernandez, Niccolo Paganini and Francisco Tarreg.

The concert begins at 7 p.m. at Holsclaw, 1017 N. Olive Road, in the UA School of Music on campus. Tickets are $30 through tucsonguitarsociety.org.

Salute to Veterans

László Veres, donning his John Philip Sousa “uniform,” will lead Arizona Symphonic Winds in Saturday’s 38th annual Veterans Day Concert.

Saturday will mark the 38th time that László Veres, donning his John Philip Sousa attire, will lead Arizona Symphonic Winds in a concert celebrating veterans.

This year’s “Salute to Veterans” concert on Veterans Day features high school senior cellist Molly Urbon-Bonine performing Saint-Saens’s famous Cello Concerto.

The program also features major marches, including Holst’s “Second Suite in F” and Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” as well as classics from the Big Band era and selections from the Broadway hit “Oklahoma.”

The concert will end as the 37 Veterans Day concerts before it with “America the Beautiful.”

Saturday’s concert begins at 2 p.m. at Catalina Foothills High School Auditorium, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive. Admission is free.

During a ceremony for the 79th anniversary of D-Day, American WWII Veteran, John "Jack" Foy, put into words the horrors he faced as a soldier fighting in General George Patton's 3rd Army in the Battle of the Bulge. Foy was a machine-gunner and described the winter battle. "The temperature is about ten below zero, a foot or so of snow on the ground. German artillery is blasting our position. The ground is heaving up and down with the violence of the explosions," said Foy in front of thousands of American graves on the coast of Normandy. 98-year-old Foy said he and the rest of his countrymen entered the war with toughness. "For the most part, we were children of the twenties, citizen soldiers, draftees and volunteers, young men raised during the Great Depression. We did not experience the care free days of childhood. Summoned by the call to arms, especially the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor," said Foy. Only a few dozen living veterans made it back for the annual ceremony.


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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Twitter @Starburch