June 2, 2023, GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Grand Rapids Community College music professor Jonathan Marshall will be performing at the Festival of the Arts on Saturday with the professor who once mentored him as a student.
Marshall and Brian Morris will be performing as the Grand Rapids Guitar Duo at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday at Festival’s Classical Stage on the Grand Rapids Art Museum, 101 Monroe Center St. NW.
The duo will perform classical guitar works by Alfanso Montes, Manuel de Falla, Ida Presti, Radames Gnattali, Johann Kaspar Mertz, Enrique Granados and a piece written by Marshall.
Festival of the Arts, which runs from Friday, June 2 to Sunday, June 4, is the city’s annual celebration of culture. The event features more than 150 performers spread out over five stages.
The event is in its 54th year, but the first under the direction of GRCC alumna Missy Summers.
Marshall is GRCC’s director of Guitar Studies and is director of the GRCC International Guitar Series. He studied under Morris, a classical guitarist and vocalist, at GRCC before earning his bachelor’s degree at Grand Valley State University and a master’s degree at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati.
Morris has been a GRCC faculty member for more than 20 years, and maintains an active performing schedule as an associate of the Michigan Arts and Humanities Touring Program.
He has performed with the West Shore Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony; at the College Music Society’s Regional Conference in Madison, Wis. the Kennedy Center and has twice been featured as a presenter of Latin American Music at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies on the campus of Notre Dame University. He earned Music degrees from Florida State University and Montana State University.