Tim Sparks

Tim Sparks
Background information
Birth name	Timothy Sparks
Born	October 31, 1954 North Carolina
Genres	Jazz, Blues, Ragtime, Roots music, Klezmer
Occupations	Guitarist
Instruments	Guitar, requinto, oud
Years active	1972-present
Labels	Tzadik Records, Acoustic Music Records
Website	Official website
Notable instruments
Collings, 1954 Martin 00-17, Lakewood

Tim Sparks (born October 31, 1954) is an American acoustic guitar player, singer, arranger and composer.

Biography

Raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he was given his first guitar when a bout of encephalitis kept him out of school for a year. The music he heard around him was traditional country blues, and the gospel his grandmother played on piano in a small church in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so that's what he taught himself to play.^[1]

He was nominated for a scholarship at the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts. There he studied the classics with Andrés Segovia protegee Jesus Silva. While recording three albums with the seminal vocal jazz ensemble Rio Nido, Sparks also became proficient in jazz styles from Brazilian to Bebop, which brought him several regional music awards including Best Acoustic Guitarist, Best Latin Jazz guitarist, and Best Jazz Guitarist in the Minnesota Music Awards. In 1993 he won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, playing his adaptation of The Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky.^[2]

In the late 90s, Sparks had been immersed in the ethnic music scene and accompanying on guitar in Greek and Klezmer orchestras.^[3] He was a featured performer with Crossing Borders at the Bethlehem International Music Festival in July 1995 and has received two Arts Fellowships to pursue ethno-musicological studies. He spent one fall studying Fado and Portuguese guitar in Lisbon. In 1989 he arranged Russian folk music for the Guthrie Theater's adaptation of Uncle Vanya and in 1991 he was commissioned to compose music for Tienanmen, a ballet depicting the student uprising in China, for Myron Johnson's Ballet of the Dolls.

In 2000, Sparks began an association with American composer John Zorn.^[4] He recorded three highly acclaimed CDs of Jewish Klezmer music adapted for acoustic fingerstyle guitar on Tzadik Records. He earned a McKnight Fellowship to notate and edit the arrangements on Neshamah for publication.

Sparks has performed as an opening act for Dolly Parton and has performed on the same stage as Sandor Szabo, Franco Morone, Cyro Baptista, Isato Nakagawa and Bill Frisell. He has also performed on such national venues as A Prairie Home Companion, the main stage of the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society. He has performed at the Edenkoben Festival and the Dresden Guitar Festival in Germany and held a Jazz Guitar teaching residency in Lisbon, Portugal. He frequently tours Japan, France, Belgium, Austria and Hungary.

Sparks continues to perform in concert and is currently a faculty member at the University of Minnesota—Morris.

Discography

Albums

• The Nutcracker Suite (1993)
• Guitar Bazaar (1995)
• One String Leads to Another (1999)
• Neshamah (Songs From The Jewish Diaspora) (1999)
• Tanz (with Cyro Baptista and Greg Cohen) (2000)
• At the Rebbe's Table (2002)
• Masada Guitars (also featuring tracks by Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot) (2003)
• Sidewalk Blues (2009)
• Little Princess (2009)

Video

• In Concert (with Franco Morone)
• Guitar Bazaar: Multicultural Ideas for Fingerstyle Guitar (instructional video) (1995)
• Fingerstyle Guitar: New Dimensions and Explorations (concert video)
• Roots, Rags, and Blues (instructional DVD) (2007)

Sheet music

• The Nutcracker Suite (1993. (Acoustic Music Records).
• Balkan Dreams Suite (1996). (Mel Bay Publications).
• Guitar Bazaar (1996). (Acoustic Music Records).
• Fingerstyle Excursions (1998). (Mel Bay Publications).
• Neshamah (2004). With Bruce Muckala (Mel Bay Publications).

References

External links

• Official Tim Sparks website
• About a Goy by Dylan Hicks, City Pages, Nov. 2002