BIOGRAPHY
Winners of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America International Ensemble Competition 2023, the Mela guitar quartet are known for their imaginative, engaging programming, ingenious arrangements and commissioning celebrated original works.
Hailed for their “collective technical brilliance and preternatural ensemble making” (Gramophone), the quartet have released four albums: a collection of original arrangements, Overtures & Dances, recorded with spatial audio specialist label TRPTK; the complete guitar quartets of composer/author Anthony Burgess; the complete guitar chamber works of Stephen Dodgson, both with Naxos; the self-released album Pluck, Strum, and Hammer!.
Notable performances have included the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, Kings Place Hall One, St. James’ Church Piccadilly, Barbican Centre’s Milton Court, St. George’s Bristol, Westminster Abbey, Soest Germany, and, of course, Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom. In Spring 2025, the quartet completed an eight-week tour of America and Canada as part of their GFA winners prize, including a USA premiere performance of Anthony Burgess' Concerto Grosso for four guitars and orchestra with Stanford Philharmonic at the Bing Concert Hall, California. In 2019 the quartet embarked on an eight concert tour of China, including Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, Changsha concert hall and Tianjin Grand Theatre.
The quartet formed in 2015 as graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. They became International Guitar Foundation Young Artists 2015/16, then Park Lane Group young artists 2018/19 and Royal Over-Seas League chamber music finalists 2019. The members Michael Butten and Zahrah Hutton joined in 2023.
The quartet are enthusiastically adding to the guitar quartet repertoire through their adventurous arrangements of much loved orchestral works and their commissions of new music. Laura Snowden, My Clock is Broken! (2019), The Emperor’s New Clothes (2023), Michael Finnissy, Albion on the Road to Hell (2019), Stephen Goss, Venezuela (2019) are all pieces commissioned and premiered by the quartet.
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The quartet are D'Addario Strings artists.
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MEET THE QUARTET
Matthew Robinson
Matthew played for just over a decade with virtuoso Flamenco-Jazz guitarist Eduardo Niebla, touring theatres and concert halls throughout the U.K. and Europe with over 50 concerts a year. They made several radio and TV appearances including BBC Radio 3 InTune, Radio 6 Cerys Matthews Show and BBC Radio 4 Loose Ends with Clive Anderson. As a soloist, Matthew has performed the Richard Rodney-Bennett guitar concerto at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room conducted by Ben Gernon and was Musician in Residence at the Courtauld Gallery, London.
Matthew is currently head of classical guitar at the junior department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and a musical director of the National Youth Guitar Ensembles (NYGE).
As a founding member of the Mela Guitar Quartet, Matthew is particularly proud of the GFA International ensemble competition win in New York during their 50th anniversary year.
George Tarlton
George Tarlton performs regularly as a soloist, one quarter of the Mela Guitar Quartet, and one fifth of the Tango band Desbande. George won first prize in the London International Guitar Competition in 2019 and was a 2019/2020 Eurostrings Artist. George has performed multiple times live on BBC Radio 3 and given recitals at Cadogan Hall, Milton Court in the Barbican, Purcell Rooms and Kings Place Hall One. In 2021, George filmed the complete Five Bagatelles by William Walton in La Mortella on the island of Ischia, Italy. Each Bagatelle was shot in a different area of the exotic gardens designed by Lady Walton and George gave two recitals in their concert hall and masterclasses in a music school near Sorrento. The project was supported by the Fondazione William Walton and Walton Trust.
George's work as an electric guitarist has seen him set up the new tango quintet Desbande playing the music of Astor Piazzolla, and recording and arranging the works of American composer Steve Reich.
Michael Butten
Michael studied at Junior Academy, where he twice won the Lower Strings Prize, before being awarded a scholarship at the Academy to continue his studies with Michael Lewin. In his first year he won the Julian Bream Prize, adjudicated by Julian Bream, and, when leaving the Academy he was awarded the David Russell prize. On completing his BMus degree with first-class honours, he received from the Academy one of the Regency Awards for Notable Achievement and in June 2014, as a postgraduate with a scholarship from Help Musicians UK, he became the first guitarist ever to win the RAM Club Prize.
Recent successes include: 2nd prize at the 2023 Francisco Tarrega Competition, Benicassim, 2021 New Elizabethan Award Holder, 2nd Prize at the 2019 GFA International Concert Artist Competition, 3rd prize at Baltimore International Guitar Competition 2022, 1st prize at Pleven Guitar Competition 2018, the Bach prizes at the 2018 and 2019 Hubert Kappel International Guitar Competition at Koblenz, as well as his Radio 3 debut of a recital recorded at the 2018 St Magnus International Festival in Orkney. He was also the 1st prize winner at the 2016 Ivor Mairants Guitar Award, and is a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
Zahrah Hutton
Zahrah studied classical guitar at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, graduating with first-class honours and the Guitar Prize in 2023. Alongside performing with the Mela Guitar Quartet, Zahrah performs and improvises on guitar, lute, and banjo with theatre company ‘A Book of Portraits’. Zahrah has played with the Listening Project, in the house band for Tell It to the Music, and was a participant in the guitar/electric guitar studio at the 2025 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt.
Zahrah is also an artist and composer. Her work has been performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, Flatpack Film Festival, and CODA. From August 2024 to January 2025, Zahrah was Artist in Residence at Stirchley Printworks, a contemporary print studio in South Birmingham. Zahrah is a Britten Pears Young Artist 2025-26, for Composition, Alternative Performance, and Performance Art (CAPPA).