Hey, Allen Krantz admits it. He started playing the guitar to get girls. He was a teenager, rock bands were cool and, well, the guitarist in the band was really cool.

But eventually, the rock band made way for another love: classical music.

"I had taken piano and violin lessons when I was a kid, so classical music was in my bloodstream," explains Krantz. "As a freshman in college, I took my first classical music class and I was hooked immediately."

On Friday, Krantz, who teaches at Temple University, and two fellow classical guitarists, David Cullen of Elizabethtown College and Ernesto Tamayo, who teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, will hold a "Guitarnival" as part of Gretna Music at Elizabethtown College, in the Leffler Performance Center.

"I have been very oriented to playing chamber music with other musicians, but I haven't done a lot with other guitarists," Krantz says. "I thought it was a neat idea."

The repertoire for guitar trios is pretty nonexistent, though the three will be playing an original trio by Paul Hindemith written in the 1920s.

"It's a very interesting, fine little piece," Krantz says. "I don't think he wrote any other guitar pieces."

 Krantz arranged two trios for three guitars. One, by Vivaldi, was originally written for lute and strings. The other, by Haydn, was written for two flutes and a cello.

Cullen and Krantz will perform two piano pieces by Spanish composer Enrique Granados originally written for piano, as well as original compositions.

And Tamayo will perform works by Bach and Agustin Barrios of Paraguay, who is considered by many to be the finest guitar composer in the world.

And interspersed throughout the concert will be solo pieces.

Krantz knew, when he decided to pursue a career as a classical guitarist, that steady work would be hard to find.

"Because there is no guitar in the orchestra, you realize you have to make your own way," he says. "I started teaching at the college level right out of school. I taught at Dickinson for a couple years. Now I'm at Temple. I always have one foot in academia."

He also performs a great deal in the Philadelphia area.

And he composes.

"I am a little bit unusual. I'm an active performer and a composer," he explains. "It's hard for me to compose when I am in performing mode and hard for me to perform when I am in composing mode. But I think musicians appreciate that I write music from the vantage point of a stage performer. It's not an abstract thing for me."

He writes all kinds of music, from symphonies to string quartets. Some is written for guitar and some is not.

Krantz has always been drawn to the sophistication of classical guitar.

"The idea that one guitar could play such full and complex, piano-like music is completely intriguing to me," he says. "(The guitar) is long on intimacy and shorter on sheer power. It tends to draw you in, speak more softly. The good guitarist can make it dramatic, but it's not shouting at you, certainly."

Krantz has long been affiliated with Gretna Music and is on the artistic committee for the festival, helping plan the season.

 He first met Gretna Music's founder, Dr. Carl Ellenberger, in the late 1970s and says, "I have been there ever since."

Early in his composing career, Gretna commissioned a piece for chamber ensemble and dance, "Anyone lived in a pretty how town" (based on an E. E. Cummings poem), which came to the attention of the Philadelphia Orchestra and was performed by them as well.

"Gretna was very supportive of my composing endeavors and I am very grateful," Krantz says. "When you are starting out, you need people to believe in you, to take a chance. Gretna did."

Guitarnival
Guitarists David Cullen, Allen Krantz and Ernesto Tamayo

Fri. 7:30 p.m.$15, $20 adults

$7.50, $10 ages 19-26

$1 for ages 18 and under

Leffler Performance Center

Elizabethtown College, 361-1508
www.gretnamusic.org