EGTA conference 2012

EUROPEAN GUITAR TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

Honorary President John Williams OBE

23r^d  Annual Conference

22^th – 24^th July 2012

Yehudi Menuhin School

Stoke d’ Abernon, Cobham

Surrey KT11 3QQ

 

Residential £150 – Includes all talks, workshops and concerts, meals and accommodation.

Non residential £110- Includes all talks, workshops and concerts, lunch and dinner

Special Guest Recitalists                Sunday 22^nd July 2012:                    8 pm

Students from Yehudi Menuhin School

Rosie Bennet and Daniel Penney

 

Monday 23^rd July 2012:                  8pm

                                                           Shared Concert

Fiona Harrison (1^st half) Daniela Rossi (2^nd half)

 

Talks and presentations by            Gary Ryan, Peter Batchelar, Rebecca Crosby, Brian Whitehouse,

Chris Goodwin, Tony Mizen,

Richard Wright, Allan Bullard,

 

EGTA invites you to the 23^rd annual conference. It is a special privilege to be able to hold our conference at this international music school founded by Yehudi Menuhin. It is a new venue for us and we are sure they will make us most welcome. The guest list is once again impressive and inspiring. We hope that there is something on the agenda for everyone and that you be able to attend. Also you will find that our conference is earlier this year leaving August free for that much deserved summer holiday!

 

Whilst we do appreciate that those in the North will have to travel a little bit further on this occasion (hope you don’t mind too much) it is hoped that our members in the South will take advantage of the shorter distance and that you will all be able to join us for this conference which is definitely the highlight of the EGTA year.

 

Please return your booking forms by 1^st July so that the appropriate arrangements can be made.

 

Visit www.egta.co.uk  for more information

CONFERENCE AGENDA

 

Sunday 22nd July 2012

3.30                 Arrival

4.00                 Tea

4.30                 Gary Ryan- Detailed analysis of selected pieces from the Trinity/Guildhall sylabus (upper grades) giving practical tips and advice.

6.30                 Dinner 8.00                 Recital –           Students from Yehudi Menuhin School

Rosie Bennet and Daniel Penney

 

 

 

Monday 23rd July 2012

 

 

8.30                Breakfast

9.30                Rebecca Crosby and Peter Batchelar -Ukelele for beginners

                       (Ukes will be provided for  this fun “hands- on” session)

11.00               Coffee 11.30               Brian Whitehouse -The Selection and Maintenance of a Guitar

                        (general advice session)

1.15                 Lunch

2.30                 Chris Goodwin – A Talk on the Lute Society

4.00                 Tea

4.30                 AGM Chaired by Neil Preston

6.00                 Tony Mizen – Lute to Uke

6.30                 Dinner

8.00                 Recital –           Fiona Harrison (1^st half) Daniela Rossi (2^nd half)

 

 

Tuesday 7th August 2011

 

 

8.30                 Breakfast

9.30                 Members Forum (a chance to share ideas for success, musical games,                                                                       pieces, exercises, discuss technique etc. open forum, members contributions encouraged)                                                              

11.00               Coffee 11.30               Alan Bullard and Richard Wright – Join the Dots (sight reading)

 

Guitars in Ensemble – An opportunity for members to share ensemble                                                        arrangements and compositions. A hands on session with music to take home and try with students and friends. Members contributions welcome.

1.00                 Lunch 2.15                

 

 

4.00                 Tea and Close of conference

Brian Whitehouse will once again bring his shop from The Classical Guitar Centre, Birmingham. There is always a little bit of spare time to treat yourself to a new piece or CD or even a new guitar!

Members are warmly encouraged to bring displays of their own music.

The Guests:

GARY RYAN

Gary Ryan is one of the world’s leading exponents of the guitar. Renowned for his compelling live performances, he has performed to exceptional critical acclaim at major venues throughout the world, winning universal praise for his formidable technique, outstanding musicianship and original concert programmes.

At the age of 27 Ryan was one of the youngest ever Professors to be appointed at the Royal College of Music and has gained a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected guitar teachers, with a rare gift for inspiring young people and players of all levels. He currently helps run the guitar programme at the Royal College of Music, where, being an accomplished pianist, he also takes improvisation, aural and keyboard musicianship classes. He is widely sought after as an adjudicator and examiner and has appeared on the jury for the televised stages of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and at many music festivals throughout the UK.

As a composer Gary Ryan has received international recognition for his highly innovative guitar compositions which draw on the rich traditions of the instrument and combine them with popular contemporary influences and extended techniques. His celebrated work for solo guitar, Scenes from The Wild West, (recorded on his CD, Worlds Apart) is now a best-selling publication. Subsequent commissions have resulted in several other ground-breaking works for solo guitar and guitar duo and trio, which have been performed world-wide. These works, including Generator (for guitar duo), Scenes from Brazil and Songs from Erin (both for solo guitar), feature on Ryan’s latest CD, Visions and Vistas, on which he has multi-tracked his ensemble pieces. Other new publications include Scenes from Brazil (Camden Music) and Play Piazzolla arr.Gary Ryan (Boosey & Hawkes).

 

PETER BATCHELAR

Peter studied guitar at the RNCM with Gordon Crosskey and John Williams.  He belonged to one of the first ensembles to join Live Music Now giving many recitals and workshops throughout Britain, and a concert in Paris with Yehudi Menuhin, President of LMN. He has played all over the world, mostly on British Council tours, in Australia, Malaysia, India, Canada, China, Korea, Hong Kong and the Middle East. Peter has worked with Opera North, the Liverpool Philharmonic, Scottish Ballet, Northern Sinfonia and Manchester Camerata. He has accompanied several singers on both lute and guitar and also gives recitals with flute. Most recently he played with Opera North in Shostakovichs’ Cheryomushki which toured to the 2009 Bregenz Festival. Peter was a founder member of EGTA  and secretary for three years. Between 2006 and 2008, together with Richard Wright, Peter developed a new syllabus for the ABRSM which involved the publication of several new books: two volumes of Time Pieces for Guitar, Scarlatti for Guitar, Weiss for Guitar and completely revised books of scales and sight-reading. This is first time the AB has published music for guitar.

Peter teaches at Leeds College of Music, King’s School Macclesfield and Withington Girls School. Peter  has published several books of guitar music for beginners and ensembles. His arrangement of Debussy’s Rêverie, for guitar duo, has been recorded by John Williams and Julian Bream.

REBECCA CROSBY

Rebecca studied guitar at the RNCM with Gordon Crosskey. She was awarded a PPRNCM following a further year’s study in 1987 and  was a founder member of EGTA(UK) in 1990.

Rebecca has worked for Kirklees Music School as a full time teacher for many years and has great experience in teaching ensembles and small groups. She has a particular interest in the principles of Kodaly teaching as applied to learning classical guitar. She was a member of the working party which produced the Common Approach Classical guitar curriculum in 1992 . In recent years Rebecca has taught wider opportunities to whole classes on both guitar and ukulele. She plays a Tony Johnson guitar and is also an experienced mandolinist.

 

The Guests:

BRIAN WHITEHOUSE

During a long teaching career Brian Whitehouse has held positions as guitar tutor for the Birmingham Conservatoire and the Universities of Birmingham, Aston, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Keele, the Birmingham Junior School of Music and Schools of King Edward VI. He has also worked as a specialist diploma examiner for The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and Trinity College of Music. He is now the director of the Classical Guitar Centre Ltd, a specialist store in Birmingham and is the author of the book The Ramirez Collection: History and Romance of the Spanish Guitar.

 

CHRIS GOODWIN

Chris Goodwin took up the lute at the age of 19, and for the last eight years has served as secretary of the Lute Society, as well as editor of both Lute News and The Lute. Goodwin has also edited and published collections of lute songs from their original manuscript sources.

He has sung in numerous choirs since childhood and has played lute in a number of ensembles, including the progressive acoustic rock/folk/early music fusion band Andwella, and The Giltspur Singers as well as English Ayres, a small circle of musicians dedicated to performing early music in an engaging way.

 

TONY MIZEN

Although Tony Mizen has been teaching the guitar in schools in Kent and Sussex for a number of years, he decided to learn the ukulele after he was asked to teach the instrument at one of his schools. Tony soon found himself getting more and more serious in his study of the instrument, and he began arranging and performing some of the standard classical guitar repertoire. This led to him producing a number of transcriptions of early lute pieces, which he later submitted to a publisher of ukulele music in the US. The result was the publication of an album containing some 24 pieces, along with a CD. Following a request from the publisher, Tony is currently arranging and recording some Baroque pieces for a second album. For our Conference, he will play some of his transcriptions, and talk about arranging the music and the fascinating potential of the instrument.      

      

ALAN BULLARD

Alan is a composer, pianist, and ABRSM examiner. He has written much educational music for a wide range of instruments as well as a large amount of music for choirs, and several pieces for the guitar. His music is performed and broadcast world-wide and appears on many CDs and publishers’ lists. Now working as a full-time composer, Alan taught for many years at the Colchester Institute, at a range of levels from beginner to post-graduate. In 2008 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Essex for his contribution to composition and education, and in 2010 he received three awards from the Musical Industries Association including two for the piano version of Joining the Dots.

The Guests:

RICHARD WRIGHT

Richard teaches guitar at the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Royal College of Music. He chaired the EGTA(UK) Grade Exams Working Party and led the classical guitar team for A Common Approach 2002. He was a consultant for ABRSM’s Music Medals scheme, helped develop their 2009 grade exam syllabus, co-edited with Peter Batchelar the supporting publication (including the two volumes of Time Pieces) and is the co-author, with Alan Bullard of Joining the Dots for guitar. From 2002–2004 Richard was the Musical Director of the National Youth Guitar Ensemble. His ground-breaking edition of Bach’s Cello Suites I–IV was published by Cadenza Music in 2008.

FIONA  HARRISON

Fiona brought out her latest CD, “The Legend of Hagoromo” last year and currently lives in Surrey. Aside from convincing her 9 yr old son that a minim is worth 2 crotchet beats and this is not negotiable, she has broadcast live on BBC radio, appeared on television and performed the Rodrigo “Concierto de Aranjuez” in the UK and Spain. Her flute and guitar ensemble work includes performances in the Barbican Centre and London Purcell Room. Fiona has worked for the ABRSM professional development team for many years, co-directed numerous flute and guitar courses and has been a guest tutor at international guitar festivals. Fiona graduated from the Royal College of Music and subsequently gained a Master of Music degree from Yale University, USA

DANIELA ROSSI

Daniela Rossi, born in Argentina, took up the guitar aged 6. She won her first classical guitar competition aged 15, and has been since laureated in many national and international classical guitar competitions including winning first prize in the prestigious XXXVI Luis Sigall International Music Competition held in Viña del Mar, Chile last year. Daniela has performed in solo recitals and with orchestras in concerts across Latin America and in the United Kingdom. Daniela studied guitar under the supervision of Eduardo Gonzalez Velasco from 1998 to 2003 at the Conservatory of Bahia Blanca, where she graduated in 2006. Daniela has participated in courses of interpretation and taken classes with leading figures in the classical guitar world including Liliana Ardissone, Victor Villadangos, Eduardo Isaac, Aniello Desiderio, Ricardo Gallén, Máximo Pujol, Margarita Escarpa, Ignacio Rodes, Walter Heinze, Pablo Ascúa, Silvina López, Ernesto Mendez, Omar Cyrulnik and Graciela Pomponio. She is currently studying under the supervision of Graham Devine.

Daniela has performed across Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Mexico, Spain, Colombia and the United Kingdom. She performed with the Orquesta Sinfónica Provincial from Bahía Blanca, Argentina, directed by  Jose Antonio Cerón Ortega and Gustavo Plis Sterenberg; Orquesta Sinfónica de la Universidad Autónoma de Hidalgo, México, directed by Armando Vargas, Orquesta Filarmónica Regional, Chile directed by Miguel Patrón Marchand and Orquesta Sinfonica de Chile, directed by Michal Nesterowicz.

She has also been invited to important festivals and to give Master-classes in Paraguay, Argentina, México and England.

In addition to her solo appearances, she also regularly performs in duo with the Argentinian guitarist Sebastian Pompilio, with whom she recorded the CD “Invierno Porteño”.

 

 

Map and Directions

 

 

The School is a few minutes from Cobham in Surrey.

From the M25

1. Leave at junction 10 and take the A3 towards London.
2. After one mile take the A245 at Painshill Roundabout and follow signs to Cobham.
3. Go through Cobham centre and follow the A245 towards Leatherhead but continue straight on to Fetcham when the A245 takes a left near Shoots Garden Centre.
4. The School is on the right immediately after crossing the M25 flyover.
5. Proceed up the drive, through the security barrier, and follow the signs to the visitors’ car park.

From London

1. Take the A3 south towards Guildford and then take the A245 to Cobham at the Painshill roundabout.
2. Then proceed as above.

The school is close to both Heathrow and Gatwick airports.