Winners of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America International Ensemble Competition 2023, the Mela guitar quartet are known for their imaginative, engaging programming, ingenious arrangements and commissioning celebrated original works.
The quartet have released three albums, the complete guitar quartets of composer/author Anthony Burgess, the complete guitar chamber works of Stephen Dodgson, both with Naxos, and the self-released album Pluck, Strum, and Hammer!
Notable performances have included the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, Kings Place Hall One, St. James’ Church Piccadilly, Barbican Centre’s Milton Court, St. George’s Bristol, Westminster Abbey, Soest Germany, and of course Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom. In 2019 the quartet embarked on an eight-concert tour of China, including Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, Changsha concert hall and Tianjin Grand Theatre. The quartet will tour America as part of their GFA winners prize in 2025.
The quartet formed in 2015 as graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. They became International Guitar Festival Young Artists 2015/16, then Park Lane Group young artists 2018/19 and Royal Over-Seas League chamber music finalists 2019. The members Michael Butten and Zahrah Hutton joined founding members Matthew Robinson and George Tarlton in 2023.
The quartet are enthusiastically adding to the guitar quartet repertoire through their adventurous arrangements of much-loved orchestral works and their commissions of new music. Laura Snowden My Clock is Broken! (2019) and The Emperor’s New Clothes (2023), Michael Finnissy Albion on the Road to Hell (2019), Stephen Goss Venezuela (2019) are pieces commissioned and premiered by the quartet.
The varied programme they will be presenting at the Church Stretton Arts Festival will include:
Maurice Ravel – Mother Goose Suite
Mikhail Glinka – Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture
E. Humperdinck – Hansel and Gretel
About the musicians…
Matthew Robinson
Matthew played for just over a decade with virtuoso Flamenco-Jazz guitarist Eduardo Niebla, touring theatres and concert halls throughout the UK and Europe with over 50 concerts a year. They made several radio and TV appearances including BBC Radio 3 In Tune, Radio 6 Cerys Matthews show and BBC Radio 4 Loose Ends with Clive Anderson. As a soloist, Matthew has performed the Richard Rodney-Bennett guitar concerto at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room and has been musician in residence at the Courtauld Gallery, London.
Matthew is currently head of classical guitar at the junior department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and a musical director of the National Youth Guitar Ensembles (NYGE).
As a founding member of the Mela guitar quartet, Matthew is particularly proud of winning the Guitar Foundation of America International ensemble competition in New York during its 50th anniversary year.
George Tarlton
George Tarlton performs regularly as a soloist, with the Mela guitar quartet and the Tango band Desbande. George won first prize in the London International Guitar Competition in 2019 and was a 2019/2020 Eurostrings Artist. George has performed multiple times live on BBC Radio 3 and given recitals at Cadogan Hall, Milton Court in the Barbican and Kings Place Hall One. In 2021 George filmed the complete Five Bagatelles by William Walton in La Mortella on the island of Ischia, Italy. Each Bagatelle was shot in a different area of the exotic gardens designed by Lady Walton and George gave two recitals in their concert hall and masterclasses in a music school near Sorrento. The project was supported by the Fondazione William Walton and Walton Trust.
George’s electric guitar skills have seen him set up the new tango quintet Desbande playing the music of Astor Piazzolla, and recording and arranging the works of American composer Steve Reich.
Michael Butten
Born in Berkshire, Michael Butten studied at Junior Academy before winning a scholarship to continue his studies there with Michael Lewin. In his first year he won the Julian Bream Prize, adjudicated by Julian Bream, and when leaving the Academy he was awarded the David Russell prize. On completing his BMus degree with first-class honours, he received from the Academy one of the Regency Awards for Notable Achievement and in June 2014, as a postgraduate with a scholarship from Help Musicians UK, he became the first guitarist ever to win the R.A.M. Club Prize.
Recent successes include: 2nd prize at the 2023 Francisco Tarrega Competition, Benicassim, 2021 New Elizabethan Award Holder, 2nd Prize at the 2019 GFA International Concert Artist Competition, 3rd prize at Baltimore International Guitar Competition 2022, 1st prize at Pleven Guitar Competition 2018, the Bach prizes at the 2018 and 2019 Hubert Kappel International Guitar Competition at Koblenz, as well as his Radio 3 debut of a recital recorded at the 2018 St Magnus International Festival in Orkney. He was also the 1st prize winner at the 2016 Ivor Mairants Guitar Award, and is a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
Zahrah Hutton
Zahrah Hutton graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2023 with first-class honours. She was awarded the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Guitar Prize in 2021 and in 2022 was supported by the Edward James Foundation to perform at West Dean Guitar Festival.
As a skilled and enthusiastic chamber musician, Zahrah has expertise playing in guitar duos, trios, quartets, and varied large ensembles. Together with recorder player Beth Toulson, Zahrah placed highly in the Sören Sieg Music Competition 2021 for their performance of Cádiz for recorder and guitar, winning the opportunity to work with the composer to premiere five new works. Zahrah recorded Sieg’s Inkanyamba suite for two guitars with Oli Kinsella, and the recordings were premiered online in December 2022. Zahrah was a member of the National Youth Guitar Ensemble camerata from 2015 to 2020.
Alongside music, Zahrah has a keen interest in art history, particularly Modernism and the relationship between music and the visual arts. Inspired by artists such as Paul Klee, Hilma af Klint, Jean Arp and Sophie Tauber-Arp, and Henri Matisse, previous avenues of exploration have included synaesthesia, the visual representation of rhythm and structure, and manifesto writing.
The Quartet has a Website .