guitar – Crosstown Arts

Memphis Flamenco Trio

Saturday, July 26, 2025 | The Green Room

Doors open at 7 pm | Show starts at 7:30 pm

$20 in advance (plus fees) | $25 at the door

Roy Brewer presents a night of solo flamenco guitar works and arrangements for flamenco ensemble, joined by flautist Sam Jesuyemi and cellist Johnathan Kirkscey. Opening for the show is local Memphis musician Davy Ray Bennet.

Roy Brewer was awarded a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Memphis in 1996. He is currently a part-time instructor at the University and is a freelance musician. Besides recording with many major label artists, his performance credits also include the Conan O’Brien Show; Austin City Limits; Later, with Jools Hollond (BBC); and his fiddle can be heard on the sound track for the motion picture Black Snake Moan. His research on Southern music has been published in the academic journals Popular Music, American Music, Popular Music and Society, and The Smithsonian Inst. Scholarly Press.

Davy Ray Bennet has been a local Memphis musician since 1996. He’s released three albums of his original songs. He graduated from the University of Memphis with a Bachelors of Music degree, with an emphasis on classical guitar performance. In his original instrumental works, Davy Ray imitates passages from musical genres that have always influenced him.

Crosstown Arts presents GRAMMY-winning guitarist Bill Mize in the Green Room.

Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm
Tickets: $15 advance | $20 day of the show

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Grammy-winning guitarist Bill Mize is a son of Tennessee, and a fitting representative of his state’s rich musical heritage. His critically lauded fingerstyle compositions are fluid and intricate, and their delivery masterful. One suspects an influential teacher, and one would be right. “I received most of my musical education from a cheap Zenith radio,” says Mize, who as a child drifted off to sleep to the decidedly non-sleepy lullabyes emanating from Nashville’s WLAC and WSM and Knoxville’s WNOX.

Maybe that’s why critics speak of his ability to “transport” the listener; the music itself has been transported. The links to his Tennessee roots are unmistakable, but so are the elements of the far wider musical realm he inhabits, and the mixture is as intoxicating as Tennessee moonshine. With a twist.

Bill is a past winner of the National Fingerstyle Guitar Competition at The Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. Guitar Player Magazine has labeled this event the “U.S. Open of guitar competitions.” Bill received a GRAMMY Award for his collaboration with musician and storyteller David Holt on the recording Stellaluna, and has been featured on the popular guitar compilations “Windham Hill Guitar Sampler” by Windham Hill Records and “Masters of the Acoustic Guitar” by Narada Records. In 2009, Bill’s music appeared in the Ken Burns documentary “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Mel Bay Productions transcribed Mize’s second CD, “Tender Explorations,” into a songbook, and his original compositions have been transcribed for Fingerstyle Guitar and Acoustic Guitar magazines.