The LAGQ is a quartet of musicians playing classical guitars that don't always sound like classical guitars. Without resorting to electronics, they bang on their instruments or use glass slides or slip alligator clips or staples onto the guitar strings.

	"I get a lot of feedback from people who use my music at very important events in their lives." -- Andrew York, guitarist and principal composer for Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Click photo for larger image. LAGQ (Los Angeles Guitar Quartet) Where: Duquesne University, PNC Recital Hall. When: Saturday, 8 p.m. Tickets: $25, 412-394-3353 or www.proartstickets.org.

The group members don't always look or act as we might expect classical guitarists to look or act. Scott Tennant, for example, with his stocky build, beard, soul 'stache and pork-pie hat, looks like a bohemian weight lifter, because he is, well, a bohemian weight lifter. He named his series of briskly-selling classical guitar books "Pumping Nylon."

Nor does the LAGQ stick to the standard classical guitar repertoire. On 2004's Grammy-winning "Guitar Heroes," for instance, they paid tribute to guitarists from Jimi Hendrix to Django Reinhardt to Chet Atkins. The group performs in casual dress to younger-than-usual audiences. Their performances have a bit of a "circus atmosphere," admits the group's principal composer, Andrew York.

Saturday night at the PNC Recital Hall at Duquesne University, they'll include their Atkins tribute "Blue Echo/Country Gentleman," in which the four guitarists play the same notes in quick succession to simulate the country legend's "slap-back" studio effects. It's musical, but it's also a hoot.

All of which might mark the LAGQ (short for Los Angeles Guitar Quartet) as DTCO (desperate to cross over), except for the fact that York, Tennant, John Dearman and William Kanengiser grew up in late 20th-century America, and they are who they are.

"When I write, I'm trying to put what I love into music," says York, on the phone from his home outside Los Angeles. "Everything through my life, the music that inspired me. It's a crystallization, and to be honest, it has to involve modern culture. It's gotta have elements of rock 'n' roll, because I used to love rock 'n' roll. It's gotta have a hint of jazz, it's gotta have everything that turned me on. If it was just a parody of what's been in the past, that's not honest. Music has to move forward and be creative."

York is the latecomer to the group, which formed in the early '80s at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, under the wing of Pepe Romero of Los Romeros, the world's first guitar quartet of any note. When original LAGQ member Anisa Angarola left in 1989, York came on board, bringing his distinctive compositional voice. The group began to delve into uncharted sounds, including two CDs on Sony that explored world music from Asian to African to Klezmer, and their latest CD, "Spin," which includes a Celtic-flavored composition by Kanengiser, and a piece by guitarist Dusan Bogdanovic inspired by Donald Fagen's "Nightfly" CD.

York belongs to a club with a long and honorable lineage -- guitarists who compose mostly for the guitar, from Fernando Sor to Francisco Tarrega to Agustin Barrios. There are good reasons, he says, why guitarists tend to write for guitar, and why composers who are not guitarists shy away from it.

"Guitar is one of the most idiomatic instruments out there. It's probably the crudest instrument in existence in the sense that both hands, the fingertips, are actually the cause of, and in touch with, the vibrating medium. Every other instrument except lute is mechanically separated from the vibrating medium. The far extreme is piano, which is an utter machine. You push the keys."

The guitar's direct connection to the fingers, along with its two-dimensional, geometric nature -- you can play up one string or across six -- involves techniques and a mindset a nonplayer might not grasp. Guitar, he sums up, is "a devilishly difficult instrument to write for."

The titles of York's pieces often have a Zen-like quality: "(Ask the) Sphinx," "Hidden Realms of Light" and "Muir Woods," about the awesome redwood forest just north of San Francisco. Asked if he's religious or spiritual or simply into meditation, he replies: "To be honest, I've always been a seeker. And to me, spirituality is a very important concern. Why are we here? What can we do to make the planet a better place?. ...

"I'm writing music for a purpose. I get a lot of feedback from people who use my music at very important events in their lives. Like it comes to them after the death of a parent, or they'll play my music during birth. For me, that's what it's all about."

As for the new CD "Spin," he says: "We wanted to do a CD that was a little bit darker in quality." The live concerts, he explains, are "a sort of a show thing," with the novelty of four guitars played by virtuosos that the audience likes to see "go nuts."

The quartet recorded "Spin" a year ago, just before taking a sabbatical to mark their 25th anniversary. York spent his time traveling, performing with other musicians and working on his hobby/second business.

"I have a small software company, audio software that will run in the background while you're working, to relax you. One of them is called 'Mind Chimes,' virtual wind chimes that run in the background, and I wrote algorithms that sound very natural. If someone's working in a cubicle, they can have it running real quiet, and it gives sort of an organic algorithm, like listening to the ocean, that makes you feel like you're not in a little metal box all day."

While on sabbatical, York got a kick out of playing with musicians other than guitarists.

LAGQ is "a lotta guitar," he says. "And guitar doesn't have a lot of sustain, as far as that goes, so sometimes you're hungry for another voice. So yeah, it's a pleasure to branch out and play with other instruments. Just for the different textures and sounds that the instrument will produce. So right now, my next commission is for piano."