Contestants on the Cave of the Winds tour.
From left to right: Composer Nikola Starcevic, Krzysztof Meisinger, Marco Sartor, Chad Ibison, Guido Sánchez, Gonzalo Gallardo, Laura Klemke, David Gálvez (photo credit: Julia Crowe)
The third JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition, open to contestants of all ages, took place in Buffalo, New York June 10-13, 2008. The Grand Prize of $7,500 (USD) includes a paid return engagement with the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony Orchestras under the direction of conductor JoAnn Falletta, along with a recording contract with Fleur de Son Classics and a concert guitar worth $10,000 made by luthier Dake Traphagen with an accompanying Karura flight case. Second Prize is $3,000.00 and the Third Prize, $1,500.00.
Named for a conductor who is also a guitarist herself, this year's competition featured ten semifinalists representing six countries and, for the first time in the competition's history, three of these semifinalists were women.
Left to right, back row: David Gálvez, Marco Sartor, Benjamin Beirs, Gonzalo Gallardo
Left to right, front row: Anna Mnich, Laura Klemke, Guido Sánchez, conductor JoAnn Falletta,
Chad Ibison, Krzysztof Meisinger and Meliset Abreu. (photo credit: Eileen Elibol)
'We received 51 contestants this year in total which we narrowed down to a smaller pool of twenty-five contestants and then to the final ten,' says Artistic Director Michael Andriaccio. The contestant submissions are sent to the WNED radio station and masked and numbered to maintain complete objectivity during the judging process.
This year's judging panel included: Artistic Co-Directors Michael Andriacco and Joanne Castellani. Ms. Castellani is on music faculty of SUNY at Buffalo and Mr Andriaccio is President and CEO of Fleur de Son Classics, Ltd. Also among the adjuctors were guitarist and University's School of Music in Montevideo instructor Eduardo Fernández, founder of Uruguay's CIM/UNESCO section and Artistic Director of Montevideo's biannual International Guitar Festivals and Columbia's Encuentros Nacionales de la Guitarra; guitarist and composer Brian Head, who serves as President of the Guitar Foundation of America; Classical 94.5/WNED program host John Landis; guitarist and composer David Leisner, who is co-chair of the guitar department at the Manhattan School of Music; Tony Morris, both a guitarist and radio host of the popular World Satellite-broadcast program, Classical Guitar Alive, and guitarist Enrique Muńoz Teruel, the director of many well-known European guitar festivals and competitions, including the Concurso Internacional de Guitarra.
After a community welcome at WNED-TV and radio, the first round of semi-finals commenced Tuesday evening, broadcast on live radio from the Mary Seaton Room of Kleinhans Music Hall. For each evening of the semifinals, five of the ten contestants performed their chosen concerto in entirety, accompanied by a pianist and then each contestant performed the required set piece, Asiana V, written by Serbian composer Nikola Starčević.
Starčević, a guitarist and graduate of the Belgrade Music Academy - FMU, was the winner of the 2007 JoAnn Falletta International Composers' Competition, which alternates years with the Guitar Concerto Competition. His winning piece, Asiana V (Orphee Editions), is dramatic with a fast-paced tempo, filled with Villa-Lobos-style chord progressions which traverse the full length of the fretboard with a sprinkling of harmonic glitter dust. The contestants had one month to learn and memorize this piece for the competition.
The first evening saw the performances of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez by Meliset Abreu of the USA. Abreu is a graduate of the Mannes College of Music in New York, where she studied with Michael Newman. She also studied with Oscar Ghiglia at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. David Gálvez of Peru performed Manuel Ponce's Concierto del Sur. Gálvez studied at the National Conservatory of Lima under Oscar Zamora and received both his bachelor and masters degrees in music from the Manhattan School of Music. Gálvez is a member of the Manhattan Guitar Quartet and currently teaches at the Long island Conservatory of Music.
Chad Ibison, who started his classical guitar studies three years ago and is studying with Andrew Zohn at Columbus State University's Schwob School of Music, performed Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Concerto No. 1 in D Major, opus 99. Krzysztof Meisinger of Poland performed Heitor Villa-Lobos' Concerto pour Guitare et petit orchestra. Meisinger is studying guitar at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz with Krzysztof Pelech and he has earned a number of competition prices, included two first prizes in the All-Poland Competition of Classical Guitar. And also, in the first evening of semifinals, Guido Sánchez of Costa Rica, who is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in guitar at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, performed the Castelnuovo Tedesco concerto.
The second evening of semifinals featured performances by Anna Mnich of Poland, who performed Ponce's Concierto del Sur. Mnich is a student of Wande Palacz at the Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland and will be conintuing her education at the Manhattan School of Music with David Starobin. Her performance was followed by Gonzalo Gallardo of Peru, who performed Roberto Sierra's Folias. Gallardo, a returning contestant, is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Arts and Sciences and he is now beginning his doctoral studies this autumn after completing his masters degree in guitar performance at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Benjamin Beirs, who studies at Peabody with Julian Gray, performed Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Concerto No. 1 in D Major, opus 99. Returning contestant Marco Sartor of Uruguay performed Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. Sartor is a graduate of the University of Uruguay's School of Music and also the College of Charleston's School of the Arts, where he studied with Marc Regnier. The last contestant to perform during the second evening was Laura Klemke of Germany, a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar. She performed Heitor Villa-Lobos' Concerto pour Guitare et petit orchestra.
Three Finalists at the Finals, Left to right:
Marco Sartor, Laura Klemke, Benjamin Beirs.
(photo credit: Eileen Elibol)
At the end of the evening, the judges announced the three finalists to be Laura Klemke of Germany, Marco Sartor of Uruguay and Benjamin Beirs of the U.S. Also, composer Nicola Starčević awarded a prize to contestant Guido Sánchez for giving the best overall performance of his piece.
Five semifinalists remained through the duration of the competition to play a citywide
series of community outreach concerts over the course of Thursday and Friday morning and afternoon. 'We asked each of the contestants to come prepared to perform twenty minutes worth of solo music, in addition to the concerto and set piece, for this opportunity,' says Artist Co-Director Joanne Castellani.
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