Chris Fossek has performed as a soloist and in ensembles in such venues as the Olympic Stadium of Rome, with Biagio Antonacci, the RedCat Theater at Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and he continues to perform throughout Southern California for festivals and public events such as the International Guitar Festival of Santa Barbara and La Fiesta in Santa Barbara.

     He holds a Master’s degree in guitar performance from the California Institute of the Arts where he has also given guitar lessons and lectures on Flamenco music. While studying at CalArts he was greatly inspired by Miroslav Tadic, who combines Eastern European folk traditions with European Baroque and European classical music, North Indian classical music, and jazz as a unique approach to improvisation and composition.

     Currently he is focusing on composing and arranging pieces within the folk traditions of flamenco music and the music of Macedonia. Both Andalusia (in Southern Spain) and Macedonia (in the former Yugoslavia) embody a rich, complex musical tradition, which grew out of the blending of many different cultures. He has found that these folk traditions provide a musical structure with endless compositional, improvisational, and virtuosic potential while maintaining the simplicity and integrity of folk music. Folk music is not about the individual. It is born from and represents people, their cultures, their history, their suffering, and their joy. The intention of folk music is pure and excludes no one. It is where we find the essence of our human necessity for music. Retaining the essence of the musical tradition is what is most important to Chris Fossek as a performer and composer no matter how adventurous an arrangement or composition may be.