John Mery
John Mery is a highly versatile and critically acclaimed guitarist with an extensive performance and recording resume as soloist, ensemble member, and sideman. Highlights of recent performances include the Guitar Foundation of America International Festival, Loudon Guitar Festival, High Desert Chamber Music, XXIII and XXIV Annual Credomatic Costa Rica Music Festival, Buenos Aires College Music Society International Conference, Chintimini Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Northwest Guitar Festival. He has recently performed with the Oregon Symphony as soloists with Tango Pacifico, with the Portland Opera performing Don Giovanni on multiple occasions and Dominick Argento's notoriously difficult Postcard From Morocco guitar part for which he received rare critical praise as an orchestra member, and with the 3rd Angle New Music Ensemble performing Maria de Buenos Aires on electric guitar. His latest solo recording “Guitarra Española - Spanish Guitar Classics” was released in 2017. His recordings have not only received critical praise but are also popular on streaming services such as Spotify (as of March 2018 16,000 plus monthly listeners) and Pandora (nearly one million streams).
John is a founding member of the Oregon Guitar Quartet, a group that has released eight critically praised recordings on the Cube Squared Records label. In addition to being an ensemble member on the recordings John served as producer for the group’s 2013 release “Classic” and as principal recording engineer for many of the group's releases, including the ensemble's 2018 release Scarlatti. This project has received regular FM radio airplay across the nation including NYC's WQXR-FM, Philadelphia's WRTI-FM, and Chicago's WFMT.
John is also a member of the quintet Tango Pacifico who released the successful 2010, all-Piazzolla CD, “Revirado”. This work led to John becoming a D’Angelico Guitars “proudly endorsed artist. In 2008 he released the CD "Solo Guitar", a project that has become a popular on many streaming music services. John records for Cube Squared Records.
John holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Arizona where he had the opportunity to study under Tom Patterson and with great masters of the guitar such as Abel Carlevaro, David Russell and Oscar Ghilia. He has also studied in Spain, France and Italy. John was born in Santiago, Chile and grew up in Tucson, AZ starting at the age of two months. He speaks a number of languages fluently. John recently discovered he is a direct descendant of passengers from the Mayflower compact on his mother's side. He is of Spanish, Italian, German, English (colonial American) and Native American descent. Genealogy is one of John's past times. You can read more about this on John's genealogy blog.
John is on the music faculty of Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, and Portland Community College where he is the Chair of Performing Arts. He currently resides with his wife, daughters and son in Portland, Oregon.