Fresh-faced and classically trained, guitarist Jon Mendle, 25, is not above sporting a mohawk. Nor is he shy about extolling the merits of the late heavy- metal guitarist Randy Rhoads.

But make no mistake, Mendle is a guitarist with serious concert hall credibility and growing renown – one of a large crop of classical guitarists arriving on the concert scene.

The rise of a new generation of guitarists is a focus of the Sacramento Guitar Society's six concerts to be offered at the Three Stages performing arts complex in Folsom.

Mendle will kick off the series on Saturday, followed by renowned guitarist William Kanengiser, then three young guitarists coming up on the international scene, and finally the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, of which Mendle is a member.

Of the six acts, none is more symbolic of the new generation of classical guitarists than Mendle, said Daniel Roest, founding member of the Sacramento Guitar Society.

"Mendle is one of those guitarists who also excels on the electric guitar," Roest said.

Mendle's love for the popular does not temper the quality of his classical technique. Rather, the electric guitar set him on his current quest.

"Almost every American classical guitarist has started with the electric guitar, then gone into classical," said Mendle, who has a fondness for performing guitar music written between the 16th and 18th centuries.

His introduction to guitar came by way of the blistering work produced by heavy metal guitarist Rhoads, who formed the late 1970s band Quiet Riot and later played with Ozzy Osbourne before his death in a plane crash in 1982.

"I knew Rhoads was studying the classical guitar and planning to study it at the college level," Mendle said. "He made me want to dig deeper into that music, and find out why."

When Mendle was 14, he did. That was when his parents gave him a recording of Segovia playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as a Christmas present.

"That was the final straw," he said. "After that, I knew that this was something that I must do."

Mendle recently graduated with a master of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and has toured with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

The quality of the teaching at the conservatory and university is reaching a new apex, said Richard Patterson, artistic director and founder of the Omni Foundation, a major and longtime presenter of classical guitar concerts in San Francisco.

It was Omni, in the 1970s, who introduced guitarists Manuel Barrueco and Kanengiser to Northern California audiences.

"After the 1970s, a lot of players went to Europe and studied there and came back and got graduate and doctorate degrees," he said. "And then they started teaching at colleges."

Now almost every college and university in the country has some sort of guitar activity. There is no shortage of degree programs offering top-notch instruction to students interested in studying the classical guitar, Patterson said.

The programs are starting to bear fruit, said Scott Cmiel, chairman of the guitar department of the preparatory division of the San Francisco Conservatory.

"Twenty years ago, the (David) Tanenbaums and (Sérgio) Assads could be counted on your fingers," said Cmiel.

"Now there are tons of people jostling to achieve that status," he said.

That is a significant generational change, as young guitarists are not only well-trained, they are musicians eager to broaden the horizons of the classical guitar repertoire.

"Each generation has an identity crisis, and strives to find its own voice," Roest said. "Segovia was an Old World Spaniard with completely different sensibilities than guitarists like Mendle who are starting their careers."

Theyoung guitarists bring a decidedly American influence to the classical genre.

"This is a natural outgrowth for the art form," said Roest.

When he appears on Saturday, Mendle will nod to the established repertoire with Bach's Lute Suite in E minor and works by John Dowland as well as Fernando Sor. Also on the program, though, will be "Petit Polymetric Suite" by Davis guitarist and former Mendle teacher Matt Grasso.

He will perform the repertoire on the 11-string arch guitar, an instrument invented in the 1980s by Peter Blanchette that allows a player to tackle the guitar and lute repertoire with one instrument.

Mendle's performance sets the stage for those who follow. Ukrainian-born Arina Burcéva, who performs at Three Stages in February, writes guitar music as well as performs it. Her works reveal a host of influences from the music of Brazil to that of Bulgaria.

Benjamin Beirs, who performs Nov. 5, brings a musical wheelhouse that ranges from Scott Joplin rags to the Bach suite. Mexican-born Zaira Meneses, founder of the Boston Guitar Quartet, performs at Folsom in May.

This new generation of guitarist is also fond of exploring chamber music. As a member of the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, which performs at Three Stages in March, the San Francisco-based Mendle gets to explore the chamber repertoire.

"Segovia never had much to do with the chamber repertoire, he was always a soloist," said Mendle. "Since his time, there has been the appearance of a lot of guitar ensembles ... so today you can find guitar quartets in a lot of major cities."

The quartet has a reputation as one of the most democratic and emotionally fruitful avenues for a musician. That suits Mendle just fine, given his overall beliefs about his role as a classical musician.

"My goal, as a performer, is to be as accessible as possible and not to be snobby in any way," he said. "Because classical music has had a problem with that – a lot of the music is too snobby for its own good."

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