Opera House hosts two guitar masters

Aug 24, 2011

Two guitar greats, Carl Verheyen and Steve Trovato, appear on the Napa Valley Opera House stage Friday night in a performance presented in conjunction with the Napa Musicians Performance Guild. 

The concert will be followed on Saturday morning with a guitar workshop with Verheyen and Trovato from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. 

In 40-plus years of playing the instrument, Verheyen has created multi-faceted career as a musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger, producer and educator with 11 CDs and two live DVDs. 

A member of the British rock group Supertramp since 1985, he has performed worldwide. He is also the creative force behind The Carl Verheyen Band.

Regarded as a guitar virtuoso capable of playing any style of music , Verheyen has been a  “first call” session player in Los Angeles for the past 25 years, playing on hundreds of records, movie soundtracks and television shows.  He  has won numerous polls and musical honors in the U.S., Germany, France, Italy and the UK.

Trovato started his musical career with piano lessons, but soon converted to the world of guitar. By 15, he’d joined the first of many bands working the New Jersey scene.  Five years later, he headed west to attend the famed Guitar Institute of Technology.

Graduating first in his class, he won the Gibson Award for outstanding musical achievement and was inducted into the Tune-Up magazine Hall of Fame and invited to headline at Jazzfest, Italy’s preeminent music festival.

Guitar Player magazine features Trovato on a regular basis with  articles and instructional lessons. Internationally, Trovato has been featured in Chittare (Italy), Guitarre and Bass (Germany), Guitar Player (Brazil), Guitar World and Just Jazz Guitar. 

In 2011, Trovator headlined the annual All-star Guitar Night. He has written more than 

30 guitar instructional works and teaches at  the Studio Jazz Department at the University of Southern California.