Alan Mearns in concert

300 North Main Avenue,Newton NC 28658

27 March, 2022

Description

Alan Stuart Mearns, Live and in concert at First UMC, Newton, NC on March 27, 2022 at 4 PM. Concert is free and everyone is invited. Alan Mearns was born and raised in Belfast Northern Ireland. He began his musical studies with the classical violin at age five and switched to the guitar at age ten after hearing a friend play “Jonny B. Goode”. He moved to the United States in his late teens and settled in Boone, North Carolina. At Appalachian State University he became the first guitarist to win the Fletcher Scholarship competition, the school’s only full ride music scholarship. Here he studied guitar performance with his first teacher and early music expert Dr Douglas James, earning many prizes and accolades. Mearns’ first musical compositions were published at age nineteen and he was commissioned to write a tone poem ‘The Vastness of the Sea’, for the Appalachian Summer Festival. He later completed his graduate studies in performance and composition with the eminent English guitar virtuoso Dr Stanley Yates and Dr Jeffrey Wood at Austin Peay University. Alan currently lives in Hickory, North Carolina with his wife Carrie and two children Ravel and Dorian. He spends his time arranging/performing/composing classical guitar music and writing his own unique brand of popular songs (under the moniker ‘Yes the Raven’). He also writes and performs traditional Irish music with fellow Belfast man and internationally acclaimed poet Adrian Rice as one half of ‘The Belfast Boys’. When not performing, Alan writes poetry, is the producer at Blue Moon Soundlab, (a professional recording studio in Hickory, NC), and teaches guitarists and songwriters of all ages at Hickory Music Factory, a local non profit that aims to make music instruction available to everyone that’s interested, regardless of economic background.