The 2021 Philadelphia Classical Guitar Competition is part of the 2021 Annual Philadelphia Classical Guitar Festival.
There are two separate divisions: 1. The Adult Division is a national competition open to advancing classical guitarists who must be 18 years of age by April 1st, 2021 and residing in the United States.
2. The Junior Division is a national competition open to students age 18 and under residing in the United States.
There are three rounds:
> The Preliminary round – The jury will review unmarked/anonymous Audio Recordings and select up to 12 advancing competitors from each division. Entrants will be notified if they have advanced to the semifinal round no later than March 15, 2021.
> The Semifinal round - will feature Video Recordings of the same repertoire submitted for the Preliminary round. Finalists will be announced by April 1, 2021.
> The Final round will feature the same Video Recordings as the Semifinal Round and will be streamed online as part of the 2021 Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society Festival.
GUIDELINES FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS
Questions can be directed to competition@phillyguitar.com
Winners will be announced at the 2021 Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society Festival after the featured artist's closing recital.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
--
(PROGRAM BELOW)
This concert was originally scheduled for spring 2020 and has been rescheduled as an online event due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A message has been sent to all previous ticket holders but please feel free to message us if you have questions at president@phillyguitar.com. Ms. Vidovic has also agreed to perform an in-person concert at a future date to be determined.
Ana Vidovic is an extraordinary talent with formidable gifts taking her place amongst the elite musicians of the world today. She is known for her beautiful tone, precise technique, well-defined phrasing and thoughtful artistry and musicianship.
Her international performance career includes frequent recitals, concerto engagements and festival appearances in most of Europe’s cultural destinations including Amsterdam, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, London, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Salzburg, Vienna, Warsaw and Zagreb. Her tours have also taken her to Australia, Brazil, Israel, Japan, Korea and Mexico. Equally impressive is the fact that she has recorded 6 CDs. Mel Bay Publications has released Ana Vidovic’s DVD entitled “Guitar Artistry in Concert,” a journey through the music of Torroba, Piazzolla and Pierre Bensusan, Sergio Assad, Stanley Myers, Villa-Lobos and Agustin Barrios Mangoré, and “Guitar Virtuoso,” a performance of works by Bach, Torroba, Paganini and Walton,
During recent seasons Ms. Vidovic’s prolific career has taken her to London where she has performed at King’s Place twice; Bordeaux and Paris, Carthage (Tunesia), Cuenca (Equador), Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Avezzano and Pescara (Italy), Aachen, Ansbach, Baden-Baden and Ettlingen (Germany), Japan, Sao Paulo (Brazil), Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney (Australia), Hong Kong, Bulle (Switzerland), Uppsala (Sweden), Istanbul, Tel Aviv, in addition to the Canadian cities of Calgary, Edmonton Kitchener Toronto and Winnipeg, She has performed throughout the U.S. at major performance venues in Austin, Baltimore, Bethesda (The Strathmore), Boston, Champaign, IL (Krannert Center), Cleveland, Dallas, Dayton, Ft. Worth, Houston, the Hawaiian Islands, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Portland (OR), St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Fe, Seattle, Washington, DC and New York City where Ms. Vidovic has performed in recital at the New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes College of Music, Baruch College, 92nd St. Y and Le Poisson Rouge. Her dazzling concerto performances have taken place with the Asheville Symphony, Bangor Symphony, Erie Philharmonic, Evansville Philharmonic, Glacier Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Idaho Falls Symphony, Illinois Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, Missoula Symphony, Rogue Valley Symphony (Oregon), Orchestra Iowa, Westmoreland Symphony (PA), West Virginia Symphony, Wheeling Symphony Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra; and with the Slovene Orchestra and Zagreb Philharmonic. Festival appearances include Le Domaine Forget (Quebec), International Guitar Festival (London), Big Sky, Montana, Caramoor Festival (Katonah, NY), Colorado Music Festival and Lake Tahoe Summerfest.
Following Summer 2019 engagements in Lichtenstein and Dubrovnik, Ana Vidovic’s 2019-20 season included appearances at An Die Musik in Baltimore, MD as well as soloist with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra; recitals in Jacksonville (FL), Los Angeles, Clarksville (TN), and Sedona (AZ); and overseas in Paris, Aachen and Bad Aibling (Germany). Unfortunately, numerous engagements in 2020 were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic including St. Louis, Duluth and overseas in Zagreb, Valencia and Istanbul. Fortunately, Ms. Vidovic was able to perform to reduced, live audiences in Hamburg and Split (Croatia) in Fall, 2020.
Ms. Vidovic has won an impressive number of prizes and international competitions including first prizes in the Albert Augustine International Competition in Bath, England, the Fernando Sor competition in Rome, Italy and the Francisco Tarrega competition in Benicasim, Spain. Other top prizes include the Eurovision Competition for Young Artists, Mauro Giuliani competition in Italy, Printemps de la Guitare in Belgium and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. In Croatia, the guitarist has performed Symphony Orchestra of the Croatian Radio and Television, as well as having been featured in three television documentaries by the eminent Croatian film director Petar Krelja.
Ana Vidovic comes from the small town of Karlovac near Zagreb, Croatia, and started playing guitar at the age of 5. At age 7, she gave her first public performance and at the age of 11 she was performing internationally. She became the youngest student at age 13 to attend the prestigious National Musical Academy in Zagreb where she studied with Professor Istvan Romer. Ms. Vidovic’s reputation in Europe led to an invitation to study with Manuel Barrueco at the Peabody Conservatory from which she graduated.
Although this event is free, we are grateful for any donations made. A suggested donation of $10 can be completed HERE.
Touted as a “gifted young guitarist” by the New York Times, and “a guitarist to keep an eye on” by the Washington Post, Mak Grgic [GER-gich] is a star on the worldwide stage. An expansive and adventurous repertoire attests to his versatility and wide-ranging interests. From the ethnic music of his native Balkans to extreme avant-garde and microtonal music, his roles as soloist, collaborator, and recording artist are fueled by curiosity, imagination, and boundless energy. As a testament to his versatility and wide-ranging appeal, in 2018 MAK was invited by legendary singer-songwriter k.d. lang to perform as the opening act for the North American leg of her Ingénue Redux Tour.
As both soloist and collaborator, MAK averages eighty-five performances a year — nearly two bookings per week. He is a founding member and active performer in two duos—the Flamenco-style “Duo Deloro” with Adam Del Monte, and the new music-focused “FretX Duo” with Daniel Lippel, guitarist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). As Young Artist in Residence with the Da Camera Society of Los Angeles, he founded “DC8,” an octet declared “an inspiring addition to the contemporary music landscape in Los Angeles [Los Angeles Times].” Other ongoing collaborations include the JACK Quartet, The Assad Brothers, violinists Augustin Hadelich, Martin Chalifour and Chee Yun, and cellists Jay Campbell, Joshua Roman, John Sant’Ambrogio, and Clive Greensmith, formerly of the Tokyo String Quartet, as well as a residency with the Slovenian Philharmonic.
In 2009 at the age of 22, MAK made his professional debut in Russia, performing the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Lande. The following spring, while on tour in the U.S. with the Zagreb Guitar Quartet, he performed with Christopher McGuire, guitarist and artistic director of the Allegro Guitar Series in Austin, Texas. That summer, at the Lancaster Festival in Ohio, he performed Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un Gentilhombre with the Festival Orchestra, as well as Boccherini’s famous Introduction et Fandango with the Festival String Quartet.
MAK makes two regular tours to Asia each season and performs in Europe every other month. Recent engagements include performances and residencies at the Musikverein and the Konzerhaus in Vienna; several venues in Portugal; Teatro Cervantes de Bejar in Castilla-Leon/Spain; the Sarajevo Music Academy; several venues in Slovenia; the Paris Guitar Foundation; Zurich University of the Arts; and the Hong Kong International Guitar Festival.
In North America, he has performed at Austin Classical Guitar; Beyond Microtonal Music Festival/Pittsburgh; the Dallas Opera for performances of Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse; Dumbarton Concerts/Washington, D.C.; Kitchener-Waterloo/Ontario; Mainly Mozart/San Diego; the National Gallery of Art; NAMM Show/California; Strathmore Hall/Maryland; the New York Classical Guitar Society; Triangle Guitar Society/North Carolina; and numerous other venues and guitar societies across the globe.
An enthusiastic recording artist, MAK’s albums capture a probing and continuous exploration of the world of guitar and all its possibilities. His latest recordings, “Balkanisms" for Naxos Music and “MAKrotonal” for MicroFest Records, explore a vast repertoire spanning ethnic music, microtonal, new music and early music on re-fretted instruments, such as a “zig-zag fretted Bach prototype guitar” that captures the temperaments of the Baroque period. MAK is also featured on another Naxos release “La Buena Vida”, with flamenco guitarist Adam del Monte. Other albums in progress include an homage to Ligeti, spotlighting gamelan-inspired guitar arrangements, “City of
Angels,” Mak's first recording of his own compositions, and on the Avie label, an all-concerto recording including Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" and "Balkan Suite," a new concerto based on music from "Balkanisms."
Also an active entrepreneur and educator, MAK is director of several organizations including the European Guitar Festival Collaborative; the Zagreb Guitar Festival; Roots & Notes Interactive Music Festival in Croatia; EuroStrings, a consortium of seventeen guitar festivals in Europe; and Music@Rush Hour in Los Angeles. He serves as an adjunct faculty member at Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, and director of the Elemental Guitar in Santa Monica, a program designed especially for young people. As a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, he founded the Virtual Guitar Orchestra, gathering 500 guitarists from more than 50 countries to date. VGO is a community-oriented project, recognized by the Library of Congress for its cultural contributions. Additionally, he co-created a virtual Eurostrings festival, connecting guitar festivals from seventeen European countries.
Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1987, MAK studied guitar in Zagreb with the revered Ante Cagalj at the Elly Basic Music Academy. By the age of 14, he was balancing his world champion status in karate with his love for the guitar. Throughout his high school years, he concertized in Ljubljana and Zagreb, splitting his weeks between the two cities, as well as competing in professional martial arts contests across Europe and Asia. Following an injury to his left thumb, he made the decision to focus solely on a career in music, going on to complete a bachelor’s degree with Alvaro Pierri at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
Pursuing advanced studies in the U.S., MAK was one of the first students to apply for USC Thornton’s new Arts Leadership graduate program, which he incorporated into his doctoral studies in guitar. He has been a student of William Kanengiser and Scott Tennant of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, in addition to Brian Head, artistic director of Guitar Foundation of America. In the fall of 2017, he began the Artist Diploma program at USC, the first guitarist in the university’s history to be admitted to this elite program.
MAK plays and endorses an array of outstanding concert guitars made by diverse craftsmen, including German Antonius Müller, Chinese master luthier, Hanson Yao, Bosnian Slavko Mrdalj, Slovenian Samo Sali, as well as a 1966 José Ramírez, all of these in addition to other re-fretted and remodeled guitars.
MAK Grgic is also proud to be involved with the Bosana Foundation, an organization that raises money for Bosnian youth. He also regularly awards education-furthering scholarships to select students across South America.
www.makgrgic.com
* * *
“…a superb, finely detailed reading that showed Grgic is a guitarist to keep an eye on.”
THE WASHINGTON POST
"Virtuosismo" and "technical dominance" are the words used by the press to describe American guitarist, Jay Kacherski. A native of New York, Kacherski has performed around the world as a soloist and member of the highly praised Texas Guitar Quartet. He has performed at distinguished music festivals and venues such as the Festival International de Guitarra de Taxco, Mexico, the Florida Guitar Foundation, the Brevard Music Center, Round Top, the New Orleans International Guitar Festival, the Southern Guitar Festival, and the International Guitar Art Festival in Shenzhen, China. He has also collaborated with Grammy-winners and nominees such as the chamber choir Conspirare, Chilean flutist Viviana Guzman, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.
Jay Kacherski spent two years living in Mexico as a Fulbright Scholar and member of the guitar faculty at the Escuela Nacional de Música, the music conservatory for the National University of Mexico (UNAM) researching, performing, and promoting contemporary classical guitar music of Mexico. His guide and teacher for this work was the world-renowned Mexican guitarist Juan Carlos Laguna. Kacherski has since premiered many new works from Mexico and has created a complete catalog of Mexican guitar works with links to videos, audio, scores, and more that can be found at www.kacherskiguitar.com.
Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society Address: 2038 Sansom street - Philadelphia, PA 19103 Phone: +1 (215) 567 2972 Email: info@phillyguitar.com
