Guitar competition to showcase international talents

IU Jacobs School of Music will sponsor the second annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition on Saturday and Sunday.

“This is only the second year of the guitar competition, and it would be really nice if we could get this turned into a really big, international type of deal,” said Erol Ozsever, associate instructor in the guitar department. “The music school already has a great reputation, but this is just one more thing the music school here could say that we have over others.”

After success with the competition last year, there is now a youth division as well as the open division, said Ernesto Bitetti, chairman of the Jacobs Guitar Department.
The youth division is open to competitors ages 11 to 17, and the open division is open to adults 18 to 35.

“In the open division, most of the people competing are going to be music majors or grad students or really younger people,” Ozsever said. “We don’t usually get too many competitors at the age limit. It is mostly just kind of a way for younger guitar students in universities to really try to build up their own résumés and portfolios and get some experience.”

Jacobs guitar students are not able to compete because it is an IU competition, Ozsever said.

“If an IU guitar student were to win first prize at our own competition with all IU faculty members on the panel of judges, then immediately people would start to speculate that something fishy was going on,” he said. “The whole point is to try to recruit guitarists from different areas of the country and some cases even the world to get them here.”

The first prize winner in the open division will win $1,500, and the top competitor in the youth division will receive $300. Competitors up through fourth place will receive a monetary award.

“We increased our prizes, so we expect to have really high quality players,” Bitetti said. “I hope that we can get the fantastic level in participation but also especially in the quality level and not only in the quantity. We put a very high standard, so I hope we can accomplish that this year.”

In addition to the competition, the festival will feature two world-renown guitarists, Berta Rojas from Paraguay on Saturday and Aniello Desiderio from Italy on Sunday.

Both performances are free and open to the public and will be at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall.

“It is really a special occasion just to have these two concerts as part of the festival as well,” Ozsever said.

This year the event will be broadcast live online. Events during this year’s festival can be seen at www.guitarfuze.com/events.