Since 2011, renowned South African guitar player Guy Buttery has been working on a project that combines his virtuosic solo guitar playing and distinctly African musical voice with contemporary compositional techniques and arrangements combined with string players. 

Having worked with the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra in an associated project, this collaboration sets up the perfect platform to take Buttery’s intricate guitar-based compositions out of their solo guitar environment and re-contextualizes them in a contemporary symphonic setting.

Buttery has worked closely with arranger and composer Chris Letcher. Together they collaborated with the KZN Philharmonic in a performance was described as “a flawless synchronization of Africa and the West”. Based on this success, the team were immediately discussing how to take this project further. This unique pairing creates a world of opportunity for the strings and guitar operating as musical equals, and even at times as rivals, rather than simply as soloist and accompanying ensemble.

Buttery’s ongoing "string project" creates an enhanced musical interaction between contemporary ‘classical’ music and his own distinctive compositional style. Composing and arranging these two forces is what has been the driving force behind this collaboration. Together with the work of Chris Letcher, the project brings a rich and uniquely South African score set amongst Western instrumentation. Each of the members as well as Buttery on guitar and mbira, the African thumb piano, are treated as independent musical voices, creating unique string textures, polyphonic melodic lines and polyrhythms, rooted in Buttery’s adventurous musical style.

Performing a “best-of” of his collective works from the last 15 years along with brand new compositions unique to this project, Buttery relooks at the guitar and strings presentation and catapults it to new heights.

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