Why stick one accomplished fingerstyle acoustic guitarist on a stage when you can plunk down four -- each from a different part of the planet, with a different style -- each playing solo and then teaming up for some "when worlds collide" magic? Why not, thought Brian Gore, a San Francisco-based guitarist, composer and entrepreneur. His idea has struck a lush, resounding chord -- "International Guitar Night" has been touring the globe for the past eight years. Friday night, IGN returns to the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild on the North Side for its fourth annual performance here.

This year's lineup includes British Celtic-to-classical-to-Michael Hedges-style virtuoso Clive Carroll; Madagascar's D'Gary, whose delicate but funky update of his country's traditional music caught the ears of Ry Cooder and David Lindley; and Miguel de la Bastide, a Trinidad native who studied flamenco's fireworks at the source in Spain and now leads a flamenco troupe in Toronto.

Talking on his cell phone from Philadelphia, where the group arrived late the previous night, is now lunching and then going shopping for guitar strings, Gore says his marketing acumen and musical talent harmonize.

"I look at it like I'm trying to put my abilities as an impresario to use in what I think is a very good cause, which is trying to get more people interested in acoustic guitar. And, of course, it does feed into the artistic side, because in my role, you get to be around the players that you find the most inspiring or most worthy, and you get to learn from them."

Pittsburgh has seen Gore perform with great composer/guitarists such as the classically influenced Andrew York (late of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet), Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (creator of a slide guitar/sitar hybrid called the Mohan Veena), the nylon- and 12-string virtuoso Ralph Towner, the Scottish jazz wizard Martin Taylor, and Brazilian guitarists Badi Assad and Marco Pereira.

Various IGN lineups have recorded two CDs -- the first includes Gore, York, the Brazilian guitarist/songwriter/singer Guinga and the Algerian-born master of a guitar tuning called DADGAD, Pierre Bensusan.

The new "International Guitar Night II" CD features the lineup we'll hear in Pittsburgh.

Gore plays a steel-stringed instrument, and he often tunes his guitar out of the standard EADGBE tuning -- a characteristic of much "new acoustic" music. His occasional two-handed tapping, slapping and the ultra-sensitive miking of his guitar might remind you of a more spare, more quiet Hedges on pieces such as "Dutch Crunch" or "David's Racetrack." On stage, his wired, megawatt smile helps to put his tunes across.

Gore bills himself as a "guitar poet," and the phrase sounds less glib when you learn that his instrumental music is intertwined with a love of words.

Now 44, Gore grew up in California, spent some years in his 20s studying in Germany, and then earned a degree in philosophy and linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

He entered the publishing business and still works part time for McGraw-Hill in educational publishing, helping the sales force launch new books and writing bits and pieces of books himself. He'll also write lyrics or what he calls "narrations" to help find a direction for an unfinished melody that ends up as a purely instrumental composition.

Well, mostly instrumental -- Gore has now accumulated a CD's worth of songs with lyrics. Asked about the quality of his singing, he says, "Well, let's put it this way, I'm going to try to find some vocalists to work with."

The style of music Gore and his contemporaries create encompasses myriad approaches from around the world and is difficult to pigeonhole. "You can't really classify it," he says, except to call it "compositionally oriented fingerstyle guitar."

The guitarists work on either the steel or nylon-stringed instrument, and though their music might have elements of folk music from around the world, from classical or jazz, it may not sound like any of those.

Gore traces the lineage of his genre, also sometimes called "new acoustic," to the '60s, and it's fair to say it had folky roots.

"John Fahey and Leo Kottke in the U.S. and John Renbourn and Burt Jansch [in the U.K.] -- those are to me the pioneers. And people like Alex de Grassi and Michael Hedges, and Pierre [Bensusan], of course -- those are the three guys who put instrumental guitar into kind of a more sophisticated direction. A direction that's not necessarily Americana or not necessarily Celtic but is sort of its own genre in a way."

A few years ago, Gore had to exercise his entrepreneurial muscles constantly. Now, he says, a road manager, agent, publicist and record label take care of business. He can focus more on the music, rehearsing the duos, trios and quartets he performs with his colleagues, and composing. His artistic side is gradually getting more of a workout.

"I'm slow at composing, I'm very very slow at composing, but I do a lot of it." He laughs. "At least three hours a day. Sometimes five, six or seven.

"I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I can tell you there are not many people in this world who have had as wide an array of experience with a diverse range of super high-caliber players from many parts of the globe than me. I think it's made me very aware of how much there is to know and how much there is to learn."