Arlington Hts. virtuoso has a thing for strings.(Special Section)

Garrett Dahm was 8 when he got what he calls his "big break," playing alongside classical guitar virtuoso Christopher Parkening in Las Vegas and earning a standing ovation from a crowd that included Whoopi Goldberg and Tom Selleck. Six years later, he won applause playing "Classical Gas," accompanied by the Metropolis Youth Symphony, at an outdoor concert at the Olympic Torch Relay in Australia.

Tonight, he plays for an audience of one, using the dimly-lit basement of his family's Arlington Heights home as his stage. But he still is professional. His fingers fly across the strings, expertly interpreting fragments of Carlo Domeniconi's "Koyunbaba." He calls it a "flashy piece" that, like a magic trick, can look "really good." It is a work for the masters, and Dahm plays it flawlessly. He rocks with his guitar - one of five he owns - keeping an intense watch on his fingers as they work their magic.

There are no sheets of music; he has memorized the notes, and they come from inside him. After 11 years of playing, his fingers know just where to go. "A lot of kids can sit down and they can play notes ... but the whole thing he brings to his music is his ability to interpret stuff like somebody who is 10 years older," says Steve Suvada, Dahm's guitar teacher of four years. Suvada has taught guitar at the college level for 20 years. In that time, he says, he's seen only about five other musicians who even can compare to Dahm's ability.

"You see a lot of kids come through," Suvada says. "For some it's a hobby, for some it's a little more than that. The thing that's really, really rare is a person who has the talent to be totally a performer. And Garrett has that."

A 15-year-old Prospect High School freshman, Dahm is the reigning national champion of the American String Teachers Association's competition. His parents now coordinate his lessons and performance gigs while Dahm dreams of studying classical guitar in the distinguished University of Southern California program, writing his own music and making performance his career.

In the future, he will give solo performances, as he often does, at local restaurants and bookstores, and make television and radio appearances. This summer, he will travel to Europe to perform with the Metropolis Youth Symphony.

You can catch Garrett Dahm in performance at 8 p.m. March 31 at Borders Books and Music outside Randhurst Shopping Center in Mount Prospect.
Holmes, Erin