WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.- Leo Kottke, frequent guest on National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and considered by many to be one of the greatest and most influential acoustic guitar players of the past thirty years, will perform at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on Saturday, February 28, at 8 pm. Tickets are $28 ($25 per member and student).

For the past three decades, Kottke has been unrelenting in his pursuit of a unique musical vision that has placed him among the foremost acoustic guitar stylists. Kottke has the ability to embrace folk and pop melodies as readily as he assimilates jazz, blues, and classical influences into his music. For all its technical brilliance and harmonic sophistication, Kottke’s music is eminently accessible. In concert, Kottke intersperses humorous monologues with vocal and instrumental selections from throughout his career.

“Leo Kottke’s guitar instrumentals - deep, resonant pieces that roll along on rock-steady finger-picking patterns…evoke American music as a guitar itself might hear it,” wrote Jon Pareles of the New York Times.

Kottke’s 1971 major label debut, Mudlark, and seminal Six and 12-String Guitar (1972) announced the arrival of a major new voice in acoustic guitar instrumental music. Classic Kottke albums like Chewing Pine (1975), Balance (1979), Time Step (1983), My Father’s Face (1989), Great Big Boy (1991), Peculiaroso (1993), and One Guitar, No Vocals (1999) have consistently won over new fans while continuing to surprise and delight longtime aficionados. Over the years, Kottke has worked in the studio and shared concert stages with everyone from Lyle Lovett, John Fahey, T-Bone Burnett, and Rickie Lee Jones, to Paco de Lucia, Pepe Romero, John Williams, John McLaughlin, and Joe Pass. Kottke performed Bob Dylan’s “Girl of the North Country” for the 2005 film North Country starring Charlize Theron, and his songs “Busted Bicycle” and “Coolidge Rising” were heard in the 2005 film The Ballad of Jack and Rose starringDaniel Day-Lewis.