VANCOUVER CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL
AFTERNOON DAILY WORKSHOPS
The Daily Workshops comprises of various workshops that target specific skills related directly to guitar playing:
Musicianship, taught by our wonderful pianist in residence, Lucida Zhao, is a class where you will work on rhythm-reading and developing a sense of beat. These skills are too often omitted during private lessons due to the limitation of time. Learning how to feel the beat and internalizing rhythm, is one of the most crucial aspects of playing music and by the end of this workshop, participants should feel comfortable breaking down rhythm in their own pieces.
Watch that tone! In this year’s Watch that tone! workshop, Daniel Bolshoy will be giving us his insights into tone and how he achieves such a beautiful tone. Check out his CD, Soñando Caminos, with works of Eduardo Sainz de la Maza to get a taste of what his tone is like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiwRq6dgUfc
Arranging for the guitar! New to this year, is the inclusion of Ben Verdery, Yale University guitar professor, who is very excited to tell us all about arranging for the guitar. Arranging is a great skill to develop, not only to be able to bring any of your favourite tunes to the guitar, but is also a phenomenal way to explore your instrument. Check out his arrangement of Amazing Grace in the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVkZTN8CIaY
Fretboard Harmony, also new to this year’s festival, will be taught by Alec Pearson. In this workshop, we will explore the logic, concepts and patterns that help us navigate that geography on the guitar.
Learning Music Effectively is a recurring workshop taught by Luis Medina where he will visit some techniques to efficiently and effectively break down a piece of music and perform it. In this year’s workshop, he will focus on memorizing a passage of music.
Masterclasses will be an opportunity to learn without being in the hot seat, by watching a lesson taught by the guest artist. There are only sixteen 30 min spots for players to perform for the guest artists.