The Wheeler School and the University of Rhode Island will be hosting the “URI Guitar Festival” consisting of discussions, classes and performances from international artists.
The festival will be held at the Wheeler school in Providence on Saturday, April 1, and the events on Sunday, April 2 will be held in the Fine Arts Center on URI’s Kingston Campus.
Adam Levin, the artistic director for the “Guitar Festival” and a guitar professor at URI, collaborated with Raffi Donian, the director of guitar studies at the Wheeler School to schedule the events. “We thought it would be more powerful by joining forces with another respected Rhode Island institution,” Levin said.
The festival features workshops and performances from local and international performers. These public concerts and “master classes” will be run by numerous guest artists and Levin. Additionally, there will be special topics lectures, ensemble workshops for New England guitar ensembles and an open mic for participating students. This will be the second year for the guitar festival, which was called the “guitar symposium” last year.
“It’s a platform to engage not only local music lovers and guitar aficionados but also to engage New England guitar students in master classes and guitar workshops,” Levin said. “It’s an expansion of what we built last year.”
While one of the events main goals is to bring together the local community of guitarists, Levin says the scope of the event is international and they have invited classical musicians from around the world.
“We’re hosting international artists from France, Romania, Iran, the United States and Hungary,” Levin said. “The idea is to reinvigorate Rhode Island as a sort of cultural capital of the United States where culture and music is blossoming and to give young guitarist an opportunity to work with the finest classical guitarists in the world.”
The first day of events will be held at Wheeler School, 216 Hope St., Providence. Events will begin with a welcome address. Following these opening remarks will be various workshops and master classes with guest artists with a lunch break scheduled at noon.
Guest solo guitarist Thibaut Garcia will be performing at 4 p.m. before dinner. Following dinner is a performance by “Duo Sonidos” a duo comprised of Levin on guitar and violinist William Knuth, with a CD signing afterwards.
Day two of the festival will take place in the Fine Arts Center on URI’s Kingston Campus. This day begins with another welcoming address and a continental breakfast from 9:45 p.m. to 10:15 a.m. This will be following by various lectures, demonstrations, and workshops into the early afternoon.
From 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. there will be an open mic night for participating ensembles, Rhode Island’s Allstate group conducted by Levin, and performances by students.
There will be another concert followed by a CD signing from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. by the “Maharaja Flamenco Trio.” Levin is hopeful students will enjoy this performance, describing it as a hip style of music stemming from Gypsy culture with various influences. There will be workshops focused on Flamenco music earlier in the day for anyone interested.
Students can purchase different levels of tickets for the event at the door or prior to the festival by contacting Levin and the music department at [email protected] – 401.874.2431 or 401.874.5955
- Active participation tickets allow you to sit in and partake in any of the lectures and lessons on both days for $110
- Two-Day Auditor Passes, which mean you can see the performances and lectures but not actively partake in lessons go for $80
- One-Day Auditor Passes go for $45
- And public concert only tickets (evening concerts) are $12 Adults/ $7 Students
More information can be found by going to: http://web.uri.edu/music/uri-guitar-festival-2017-2/