January 14-17 20162016 the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Is Honored to Host the 3Rd International Maurizio Biasini Guitar Competition and Festival (Ccimb)
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Nadia Guth Biasini President David Tanenbaum Artistic Director 2016 January 14-17 2016 The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is honored to host the 3rd International Maurizio Biasini Guitar Competition and Festival (cciMB). On behalf of our school, I am pleased to welcome such a distinguished group of artists, faculty and competitors from around the world. This year we will launch an inaugural festival to accompany the Biasini Competition. This initiative resulted from an inspired effort undertaken by the Chair of our Guitar Department, David Tanenbaum; the President of cciMB, Nadia Guth Biasini; the Harris Guitar Foundation and the OMNI Foundation for the Performing Arts. We are excited to feature the Conservatory’s exceptional faculty, students and alumni in performances that will include four world premieres for classical guitar. San Francisco is an international center for innovation and music, and SFCM is home to the first graduate degree program in guitar in the United States. It is an ideal place to celebrate the history and future of classical guitar and this great partnership with the Biasini Competition and Festival. Over the next four days, I invite you to explore our wonderful city and enjoy the thrilling music that will comprise this event. Thank you for being with us and for your support. Sincerely, David H. Stull President San Francisco Conservatory of Music Acknowledgements The cciMB 2016 Competition is generously sponsored by the family of Maurizio Biasini, in partnership with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In addition, the OMNI Foundation for the Performing Arts has provided concert ticket sales through their box office, while the Swiss and Italian Consulates in San Francisco promoted the cciMB Competition and Festival. The cciMB 2016 Competition and Festival would like to thank the following individuals who have enthusiastically supported this event. Special thanks to: David H. Stull President, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Gloria S. Kim Vice President of Artistic Operations, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Scott Sandmeier Music Director of San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra Nicole Paiement New Music Chair, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Richard Patterson Director, OMNI Foundation for the Arts L. John Harris President, Harris Guitar Foundation Mauro Battocchi Consul General of Italy in San Francisco Paolo Barlera Director, Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco Martin Schwartz Cultural Coordinator, Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco 50 Oak Street | San Francisco | CA I am delighted to welcome you to the third edition of the International Guitar Competition Maurizio Biasini (cciMB) at the wonderful San Francisco Conservatory of Music. cciMB started seven years ago as a concert at the Bologna Conservatory dedicated to Maurizio Biasini. He would certainly have been touched to see our first edition of the competition unfold in Bologna with its very well-prepared participants and its fine jury. The substantial advancement this competition has made––from the Musikakademie Basel, where it took place in 2013, to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music––would astonish Maurizio even more. For the first time, our program includes a festival with a series of concerts by outstanding classical guitarists and musicians. I am looking forward to getting to know our talented young participants who will be performing in the semi- final and final rounds, and hope that the weekend will be an important and rewarding experience for all the participants. I would like to express my gratitude to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and its guitar department, chaired by David Tanenbaum, for their warm hospitality and collaboration. I would like to also thank our six jurors for their engagement, and my friend Marianne van Buuren for her dedicated preparation of the competition. Kindest, Nadia Guth Biasini President Association of the International Guitar Competition Maurizio Biasini 1 International Guitar Competition & Festival On behalf of the Associazione Concorso Chitarristico Internazionale Maurizio Biasini, the Maurizio Biasini San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Harris Guitar Foundation, and the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts, I am thrilled to welcome the 3rd International Maurizio Biasini Guitar Competition and Festival to San Francisco. Maurizio Biasini was a noted scientist as well as a beloved classical guitarist with a master’s degree from the Conservatory of Bologna. Upon his premature passing, a community of his friends and fellow guitarists, spearheaded by his widow Nadia Guth Biasini, decided to create a roving competition in his honor. After highly successful versions in Bologna (2011) and Basel (2013) the competition moves here; it will next occur again in Europe in 2018. What is different about this third version is that we have also turned it into a festival, and in doing so we have marshaled some of the main forces behind the classical guitar in the Bay Area. At this event we will feature classical guitar tradition as well as innovation. Festival-goers can experience Conservatory guitar students playing on instruments from the Harris Guitar Collection, and you will hear a wide variety of repertoire ranging from the first major guitar concerto (Giuliani) to the most famous guitar concerto (Rodrigo) to a brand new guitar concerto (Clarice Assad). Three other world premieres include a new piece for amplified guitar with electronics by the Italian composer Nicola Evangelisti, a solo work written for the competition by SFCM faculty member Sérgio Assad, and a piece dedicated to our Conservatory Guitar Ensemble by Chilean composer Javier Fariás, in which the ensemble will be joined by two narrators. This program book contains program notes for each of the four new pieces, to help the listener gain a way in. The festival will open with that first guitar concerto, and as the weekend unfolds, you will hear guitars played with pipe cleaners under the strings to imitate the sound of marimbas, guitarists singing a Mayan prayer, beating rhythms on their chests, interacting with electronics, and of course playing the core repertoire that we all love. On Friday night you will hear the excellent young Italian guitarist Emanuele Buono, who came back with great determination to take the top prize in Basel after having placed second in Bologna. And on Saturday night our international panel of jurors will play a program of Swiss and Italian guitar music to honor the heritage of the Biasini Guth family. At the center of all this activity will be the Biasini’s guiding purpose, the competition: the drama of young guitarists vying for a major prize that will help launch a career. Thank you for joining us! David Tanenbaum Artistic Director, International Guitar Competition Maurizio Biasini Chair, Guitar Department, San Francisco Conservatory of Music 2 International Guitar Competition & Festival Maurizio Biasini The International Guitar Competition Maurizio Biasini (cciMB) and Festival is proud to present its 3rd edition (Jan. 14-17, 2016) at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) under the artistic direction of David Tanenbaum, chair of the SFCM guitar department. Dedicated to the physicist and musician Maurizio Biasini, the competition aims at selecting young (ages 18 to 35), exceptionally talented classical guitarists and to promote their professional career through musical events, concerts, and various promotional activities. The winner of the competition will receive a cash prize of $12,000, an invitation to perform a recital in Switzerland (Rising Stars series of the Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Basel, 2017/2018), as well as other concerts in Italy (Associazione Conoscere la Musica – Mario Pellegrini, Bologna) and France (Festival International de Guitare de Paris, 2016). The competition is unique in its efforts to create a permanent connection between conservatories with a long-standing tradition in classical guitar performance and composition in different countries (Italy, Switzerland, and the USA) and to alternate between them. For each edition, a composition for classical guitar is commissioned from a composer connected with the hosting conservatory. While setting high standards in respect to its program, the competition pays special attention to the learning experience of its participants, who are invited to take part in various social and musical events during the competition. 2016 Competition For the first time the preliminary round of the competition was completed through an online screening procedure which resulted in the selection of the semi-finalists by the international jury consisting of Artistic Director David Tanenbaum, Gérard Abiton (Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris and Pôle Supérieur Paris-Boulogne, France), Marco Vinicio Carnicelli (Conservatorio Piccinni di Bari, Italy), Alberto Martelli (Conservatorio Boito di Parma, Italy), Stephan Schmidt (Musikakademie Basel, Switzerland), and Walter Zanetti (Conservatorio Martini di Bologna, Italy). The semi-finalists, coming from nine different countries (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Slovenia, Ukraine, and the USA), will continue the competition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on January 15 and 16, playing a 25-minute individual program that includes two movements from the four lute suites by Johann Sebastian Bach as well as the cciMB 2016 commissioned piece Imbricatta by Sérgio Assad. The final round, which will take place on Sunday, January