Arden hosts exotic cocktail of music

It only takes one song to become an international sensation. And Guitar Republic magically played it in a viral YouTube video called Funky Sex Republic.

The instrumental combined sensual blues riffs, two-handed tapping and a bowing technique on guitar that spread like wildfire across the Internet.

It was the Italian electro-acoustic guitar trio’s debut onto the world’s viral stage. Ex-classical guitarist Pino Forestiere is still at a loss to explain the ensembles’ sudden jump to fame.

“It is such a strange project. We are three friends who like to play at my house. The video for me was a miracle. I don’t know why it became so popular,“ says Forestiere speaking in halting English from his Rome apartment. The other two guitarists are Stephano Barone and Sergio Altamura.

The threesome is making their Western Canadian debut performance at the Arden Theatre next Friday before heading off to the Banff Centre.

Borrowing from Mediterranean influences, the ensemble’s music is a unique cocktail of jazz, blues, rock, pop and contemporary classical.

“For me, the greatest experience is that we play in three different styles. There is great energy in that.”

Stephano Barone, at 32, is the trio’s youngest member tapped from the fruits of a contemporary generation.

“He is young, he is from Naples. Naples is the focus of much energy and Stephano inside has a lot of energy and creates sounds like drums, percussion and a bass line. He is the train who drives the rhythm.”

Forestiere, the group’s arranger, describes Altamura as a wizard of sound.

“For Sergio, the guitar is the base of sound, the base for a lot of different sounds. He plays the bow of a cello on guitar and he plays strange sounds and creates strange effects and that is great.”

In the last 18 months the trio has been together, they’ve recorded one album, the self-titled Guitar Republic on the CandyRat Records label. And they have been on the move touring the United States and Eastern Canada.

The Arden concert, a blend of solo-duo-trio performances, promises to bring guitar percussion, cello etudes and avant-garde sound effects to new heights.

“The energy is the primary skill of the trio. And the sound – because we have such a strange sound – is great way to listen and view new and different things. The music is really a very exotic cocktail and the compositions have a lot of different elements. It is difficult to explain, but when you listen to our music you will understand.”