VANCOUVER CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL

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The Daily Workshops comprises of various workshops that target specific skills related directly to guitar playing:

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Performance Anxiety: Finding Your Own Unique Solution, with Julia Lockhart

 

This workshop is an inclusive overview of a range of strategies to help students understand and manage performance anxiety. Topics will include setting reasonable goals, addressing negative thoughts and perfectionism, and integrating mindfulness and flow into practicing and performance. It aims to help students of any level to feel supported and empowered. 

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Choosing Fingerings for Precision and Expression, with Michael Kolk

Planning out fingerings is one of the most creative parts of classical guitar interpretation. The decisions made during this stage of preparing a piece will impact not only how well you can execute the music technically, but how your musical ideas come across. Learning to solve technical problems with creative fingering choices is key to realizing your own unique musical vision of a piece, and performing with confidence.

The workshop will provide strategies for choosing or modifying left and right hand fingerings to maximize ease of playing and freedom of expression. Through examples from the repertoire, Michael will outline the general principles for choosing fingerings and demonstrate how to arrive at decisions that best suit your own physiology and musical intentions.​

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Ideas for Better Practice, with Alec Pearson

We all love playing the guitar, so much so that we tend to feel like we don't have enough time to practice or prepare as we would like. In this workshop, we explore ways to prepare and learn our music more effectively. We will look at strategies for making frustrating challenges more approachable and fun. Ideas and concepts will be presented in a manner easy enough for a total beginner to understand and then expanded upon for the more advanced players in the group.

 

Warming -up with Anna Pietrzak

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In this workshop, you'll be introduced to a series of exercises for both hands which will help you to further your technique. You will learn how to minimize tensions in the left hand and develop speed and precision in your playing.

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Improving your sight-reading with Simon Farintosh

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University of Toronto DMA student, Simon Farintosh, presents a sight-reading workshop for beginner-intermediate students. Students can expect to learn strategies for improving their sight-reading abilities by means of simple exercises, visualization techniques, and pattern recognition.

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México Mágico: On the life of Julio Cesar Oliva, with Luis Angel Medina

 

This lecture will shed a light on Oliva’s incredible life and career as well as offer a glimpse on his compositional output, exploring samples from his solo works to chamber music; this lecture will also explore the existing literature that has, to some extent, touched on his compositional output and style.

 

Born in 1947, Julio Cesar Oliva, classical guitar composer and performer, is considered to be one of the greatest guitarists in the history of guitar in Mexico. He has a prolific performing career with over three thousand concerts that took him all over Mexico, Europe, and the US. Throughout Mexico, he has also been celebrated by guitar festivals. He stands alongside composers such as Leo Brouwer, Dusan Bogdanovic, Andrew York, Roland Dyens, and others, who wrote set pieces for the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA), the most prestigious guitar competition in the world. Outdated accounts claim that he has written over two hundred pieces for the guitar, however, being one of the most obscure composers of our time, only very few of his pieces were ever published, recorded or even heard of outside of Mexico. ​

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Open Mic, hosted by Luis Medina

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Performing in front of people at the open mic event offers numerous benefits. Firstly, it provides an invaluable opportunity to showcase your budding talent and share your love for classical guitar with a supportive audience. The experience of performing live can significantly boost your self-assurance and stage presence, helping you overcome stage fright and perform more confidently in the future. The open mic setting fosters a warm and welcoming atmosphere, allowing you to receive valuable feedback from fellow musicians and attendees, which can be instrumental in your ongoing musical development. Moreover, the event provides a unique chance to connect with like-minded individuals, establishing friendships and potential musical partnerships. 

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Guitar Orchestra, with Luis Medina

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The Guitar Orchestra will be daily rehearsals where different players will learn and play different parts of the music to make one piece come to life. The Guitar Orchestra aims to simulate the large ensemble experience by rehearsing together, following a conductor, and listening to how the different parts move together. The rehearsals happen daily and are geared towards the closing concert, where participants will showcase the results of the week’s rehearsals.

 

Musicianship, with Lucida Zhao

 

Taught by our wonderful pianist in residence, Lucida Zhao, musicianship 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.

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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 six 30 min spots for players to perform for Jorge Caballero

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