This album brings together three icons of western art: one operatic, one cinematic and one symphonic. Though fundamentally different, they each explore a complex drama that blurs the lines between narrative and abstraction and breaks new ground in guitar quartet genre. When Gioachino Rossini’s IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA was premiered in 1816, it was a resounding flop - complete with audience hisses and onstage debacles. However, it has since become one of the most beloved operas of all time and the TxGQ, like so many, fell in love with the OVERTURE through Bugs Bunny's infamous iconic cartoon The Rabbit of Seville. It features some of the most memorable and endearing melodies in the whole of music and was arranged here by TxGQ member Alejandro Montiel. THE LONDON FOG by Joseph Williams II is directly inspired by the icon of film Alfred Hitchcock. In 1927, the “Master of Suspense” created his third film and his first masterpiece The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. It tells the story of a “Jack the Ripper-esque” killer, an enigmatic stranger and a beautiful blonde woman named Daisy caught in a triangle of love, murder and mystery. This fabulous film has all the traits of the mature Hitchcock: it is cinematically brilliant, psychologically probing, and often hilarious. In 2014, Joseph composed an original score to The Lodger. In 2015, the TxGQ, along with virtuoso cellist Bion Tsang, premiered the new work and they continue to present this in concert live with the film. The LONDON FOG is a suite drawn from the film score and evokes the dangerous and sentimental world of Hitchcock. Mozart’s SYMPHONY NO. 40 is a perennial favorite and an icon of the supreme elegance and sophistication of the classical era. Leonard Bernstein described it as “a work of utmost passion utterly contained” and goes further to state “If one had to point to a work that symbolized in itself the essence of the whole Faustian experience of man… this would be it” (The Unanswered Question. Harvard, 1973). Alejandro Montiel took on the Herculean task of arranging this symphony which has never before been performed its entirety on guitars.