Patty Larkin is just one of the 14 female artists who grace the exquisite instrumental guitar compilation “La Guitara.” All are world class, playing clubs, theaters, concert halls and workshops all around the globe—Larkin herself returns to Portsmouth to show off her own song craft and guitar chops at The Music Hall in Portsmouth this Friday, April 21.

Why a record of only women? For Larkin, the idea goes way back.

“When I went to Vanguard (Records) in 1999, it was part of what we wanted to do. And for even four years before that,” says Larkin of “La Guitara,” which she co-produced with longtime collaborator Bette Warner. “Basically, it’s been 10 years that I’ve been thinking about it. It’s a real thrill to have it finished and it was a real love project to do.”

Back in the day, Larkin was a regular performer at Newmarket’s Stone Church. Her spray-painted name even graced the wall backstage before the latest owners renovated the joint. Larkin thinks back fondly on those days at The Church, when she was honing her guitar chops.

“It was one of the places where people got what we were doing,” she says of the little club on the hill. “My band used to play there. It was in the 1980s, and yeah, that gig meant a lot to us. It was like a base for us, really.”

Over the years of success beyond The Church, touring the world behind her 10 albums, Larkin got tired of being asked why there are no great female guitar players. Finally, she and Warner got to work finding the best female guitarists the world had to offer. They even hired a researcher to scour the Web, and took suggestions from trusted friends like finger-style guitar legend Leo Kottke. The result?

“It depends on the idiom, it depends on the genre. In classical we found dozens of players who were high-level performers, and they were also female. But there’s a real visibility problem, and I don’t know if there’s a glass ceiling or what,” she says. “So, I think we’re kind of pushing that envelope, but also I think we’re chasing something that’s already happened.”

Memphis Minnie’s jumpy, twangy, country blues finger picking on “Let’s Go To Town” is as good as any from the genre in the 1930s and ’40s. Ellen McIlwaine somehow manages to coax sitar sounds out of her 12-string guitar and slide with ease on “Sidu (Grandmother),” but then she had Jimi Hendrix in her band at one point, and uh, he didn’t suck. And Wu Man’s work on the gorgeous, plunking Pipa, a Chinese instrument like the lute, is transcendent.

The prodigious body of work from these guitarists can’t be ignored forever, and this is clearly just the tip of the iceberg. Larkin’s labor of love is a start.

“The thing we did find that was interesting to me, was that there wasn’t that much out there about women guitarists,” Larkin says of the album research. “There was a mention, maybe a Memphis Minnie here or a Bonnie Raitt there or Joan Jett, but I feel like maybe Jennifer Batten should be in a top 100 readers poll for Rolling Stone.”

Indeed, Batten’s unbelievable two-handed fret work is on par with the stuff that drove a million teenage boys to lock themselves in a room with Eddie Van Halen tabs in the 1980s. Batten held down guitar duties for Michael Jackson on his “Bad and “HIStory” tours, too. Listening to this CD does make you wonder why female guitar players are so seldom credited as “ground breakers.” The playing is stunning.
“It’s so over,” Larkin says in the album’s liner notes about “the question.” “This is the eye opener, The Maiden Voyage, a glimpse at what’s already been going on behind those not so closed doors.”

Compilations like this usually have a hodge-podge feel to them, but “La Guitara” is surprisingly cohesive for such a diverse collection of work. From the super speedy numbers like Mimi Fox’s hollow body solo jazz attack “Lady Byrd” and Brazilian Sharon Isbin’s classical whirlwind “La Catedral: ii Allegro Solemne” to foot-tappers “Kewpie Station” from Kaki King and “The Bear” from Alex Houghton, this album is chock full of the stuff any self respecting guitar connoisseur should have on their iPod.

Larkin is happy to push against the historical tide and make sure that brilliant female guitarists don’t go overlooked. But more than that, she wants music to play on. A portion of the album sales of “La Guitara” go to the charity Guitars in the Classroom.

“I now have two little kids, two little kids that I adopted from China,” she says “And I thought, ‘Let’s start getting music back into school somehow, back into the communities.’”

Guitars in the Classroom teaches the teachers how to play guitar, and they in turn bring the instrument into the classroom.

“It’s cool! And we’ve been seeing people across the country who are part of the program, kids who are in an ensemble with like 30 other guitarists. And they all have something in common. It’s a great way to reach kids who are sometimes marginalized.”

In “Bound Brook,” a lonesome, distant sounding acoustic blues guitar strums as a shimmering slide guitar swoops out of the speakers. Deep waves of music drift beneath and a soft bass guitar thumps out the rhythm. The instrumental sounds like a drive through the desert with the top down at twilight. It’s the kind of song that movie directors drool over for a soundtrack, and it’s one of the album’s clear highlights. This is Larkin’s musical contribution to “La Guitara,” above and beyond the vision that shaped it.