CCM Welcomes Classical Guitarist Oscar Ghiglia for 40th Anniversary Residency This Weekend

Guitar virtuoso Oscar Ghiglia.

CCM’s Guest Artist Series welcomes legendary classical guitarist Oscar Ghiglia for a very special performance at 4 p.m. this Sunday, Oct. 12. This concert celebrates Ghiglia’s 40th residency at CCM! The performance is free and open to the general public.

CCM guitarists have been the enthusiastic beneficiaries of Ghiglia’s concerts and master classes since 1974. He is the major and, perhaps, most persuasive exponent of Andrés Segovia-inspired European guitar playing.

About Oscar Ghiglia
Oscar Ghiglia was born in Livorno, Italy, to a pianist mother and a painter father. While attending Rome’s Santa Cecilia Conservatory, he participated in Segovia’s summer master classes in Siena and Santiago de Compostela. His graduation from the Conservatory in 1962 was followed by several important awards: first prize in the Orense Guitar Competition, first prize in the Santiago de Compostela Guitar Competition and first prize in the Radio France International Guitar Competition.

In 1964, Andres Segovia invited Ghiglia to be his assistant in master classes in California. Since then, Ghiglia has given concerts and master classes throughout the world. In addition to appearing extensively in all parts of North and South America and Europe, he is a frequent performer in the Far East, Israel, Argentina, New Zealand and the South Pacific, and has recorded for Angel, Nonesuch and Stradivarius Records. While being active as a concert artist, Ghiglia has always favored teaching as a sister-profession. Very few well-known guitarists today have not at one time or another been in his classes and profited from his lessons.

Ghiglia is currently professor emeritus of guitar at the Basel Music-Akademie, and gives summer courses in Europe, America and the Middle East. He established the classical guitar summer program at Aspen, Colorado, and taught there for twenty years. He now regularly gives summer classes at the Festival d’Arc in southern France, at the Chigi Academy in Siena, Italy and at the Festival Gargnano, Italy. The Hartt School of Music awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2004 for his outstanding contributions to classical guitar teaching and performance. In 2009, the Guitar Foundation of America presented him with their prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

Repertoire

• J.S. BACH: Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, BWV 998
• FERNANDO SOR: Caprice “La Calme,” Op. 50
• MANUEL DE FALLA: Homenaje “Le Tombeau de Debussy” (1920)
• FRANK MARTIN: Quatre Pièces Brèves (1933)
• MANUEL PONCE: Sonata Romantica (1928)

CCM’s Sandra Rivers Performs at Steinway Hall This Thursday

Photography by Jay Yocis.

Professor of Collaborative Piano Sandra Rivers continues CCM’s 2010-11 Steinway Hall Series of Concerts this Thursday, Dec. 9. Her program will include Beethoven’s Sonata Op.54 in F Major, Chopin’s Ballade in A-flat Major; Rachmaninoff’s Etudes Tableaux Op. 39 Nos. 8 and 9 and Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes. The concert is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at Steinway Hall, 109 West 57th Street in New York City. The CCM Steinway Hall Series is open to the general public, but seating is limited. The next installment of this concert series will occur on Thursday, Jan. 13 and will feature Hitomi Koyama, a doctoral student of Elisabeth and Eugene Pridonoff.