Anthony LaLena is a guitarist and scholar currently residing in Rochester, New York. He has recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in classical guitar performance and is currently pursuing a PhD in historical musicology at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. As a teaching assistant for Dr. Nicholas Goluses, he has taught fretboard harmony, guitar pedagogy, and private lessons. He currently serves as lecturer of musicology at SUNY Geneseo, where he teaches courses on jazz, rock, and western classical music from the Renaissance to the present.

Anthony has performed in the United States and Europe as both a soloist and chamber musician. After a performance by the Fredonia Guitar Quartet at Le Musée de Jouet in Colmar, France, Anthony and his colleagues were hailed as a “remarkable group of young musicians” by the city’s newspaper, L’Alsace. During Anthony’s tenure with the Fredonia Guitar Quartet the ensemble was the inspiration and dedicatee of a work by the late French guitarist and composer, Roland Dyens. Current chamber music projects include the LaLena-Marcondes guitar duo, which specializes in the vast repertoire of early-twentieth century guitar duet arrangements, and a duo with soprano, Robin Steitz. He also plays with New York Guitar Quartet, which made their debut during the 2019-20 season of the Skaneateles Guitar Concert Series and is currently completing a world premiere recording of composition by John Anthony Lennon. Anthony is also dedicated to historically informed performance practice, and has performed concerts on Baroque guitar, nineteenth-century guitar, and early-twentieth gut-strung instruments.

As an avid researcher, Anthony has traveled to Spain where he studied plucked-string repertoire of the sixteenth century and nineteenth century guitar history at the Conservatorio de Musica de Manuel Castillo in Seville. Anthony has also studied Baroque performance practice and arrangement with the celebrated harpsichordist, Dr. Kenneth Cooper, at the Manhattan School of Music, and baroque guitar with Paul O’Dette. In addition to studies in early music, Anthony has a particular interest in the music of the early twentieth century and contemporary work, and has been involved in commissioning new music and performing in concerts for the American Composers Alliance in New York City. Currently, he is completing a recording project of new solo guitar music by Gulli Björnsson and Mark Delpriora.

His musicological research is focused on music and politics, and specifically the musical construction of identity and race in twentieth-century Spain. His most recent work concerning the guitar focuses on distance and longing in the music of composers of the Spanish diaspora following the Spanish Civil War. His dissertation work is centered on the music of Manuel de Falla and the intersection of imperial identity, gender, race, and modernist aesthetics in Spain. More broadly, his research interests include the aesthetics of fragmentation, failure, humor, and puppetry in modernist theatrical music. He also maintains a scholarly interest in popular music of the later 20th century, consumerism, subculture, and noise. He routinely presents papers and lecture-recitals at international conferences throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

As a guitarist he has performed in masterclasses for such distinguished artists as Manuel Barrueco, David Russell, and Eduardo Fernandez. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the State University of New York at Fredonia, where he was awarded a Performer’s Certificate for demonstrating exceptional musicianship. He also holds a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied under the composer and guitarist, Mark Delpriora. Most recently, he has been awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate and won first prize in the concerto competition at the Eastman School of Music. As a scholar, his work has been supported by the Jerald C. Graue Fellowship, the Glenn Watkins Traveling Fellowship, the Helmers Traveling Fellowship, and the Elsa T. Johnson Fellowship Dissertation Fellowship.

Videos and recordings can be found on YouTube, as well as under the video tab on this website.