Andrew York is one of the guitar's major modern composers and performers and it's thanks to Stephen Crawford and the Bermuda School of Music that we could hear him as a soloist at St. Andrew's Church.

He composed his first number, Faire, at the encouragement of a friend who heard the improvised embryo of the piece when Andrew was playing gigs at a thai restaurant. One wonders if any of the satay gai eaters on that night recall the occasion. The result: one of York's best-loved compositions.

The immediate impression from Faire is one of bustle, commotion and commerce, diminishing to a slightly melancholic interlude and ending with a finale reminiscent of the later Dowland phantasies. Faire enough.

His performance style is unique. The music that emerges is silk-smooth with no string change sounds, and the sound is big, unashamedly baritone and beautifully balanced. His technical facility with his trademark mixture of harmonic and stopped strings, use of tunings and left hand hammers is already apparent in this early piece. There is another dynamic at work here which Nick Bell pointed out to me. We are listening to the music of a composer, played by the composer, and as such we are witnessing a rare event. Some composers were and are notoriously bad at playing their own works. But with York, we are in expert hands. His technique is ultimately subordinate to musical vision. The vision is lasting; York played all his pieces as if for the first time. His eyes shut, he reaches beyond the music. I'll never look at York scores in the same way again; they are all basically distilled feelings. A player armed with this knowledge will realise that the ability to merely play the pieces is the first of many steps leading to emotional interpretation such as York delivered.

Highlights of the first half of the concert included the only one-man reggae classical guitar piece ever composed, Marley's Ghost, and the Three Dance Suite of Bagatelle, Saraband, Gigue, and the pieces Andecy and Chilean Dance. The second half of the concert kicked off with four movements from Bach's Cello Suite No 3 (BWV 1009) and here York showed that his ability as a performer/composer can transform interpretation of established works. Instead of trying to "create" virtual sounds in Bach's music by voicing implied chords ? or by guessing at them, as various and worthy transcribers of this suite ranging from Stingl to Yates do ? he simply tunes the guitar to cello pitch and plays the suite "as it lays" directly on the guitar. The result is unique and completely authentic. Cello = Guitar. York finished the concert with five pieces from his Kinderlight suite, a charming modern restatement of Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, Letting Go, a piece he wrote for Scott Tennant, and a commissioned work, Moontan.

Thunderous applause brought Andrew back on stage to perform an encore of his most famous composition, Sunburst.