Cuban/Austrian guitarist Marco Tamayo is acclaimed as the “Il Re della Chitarra” (The king of the guitar). He is a prize winner in no fewer than 25 major international competitions including the Michele Pittaluga -Cita di Alessandria (Italy), the International Guitar Competition Andrés Segovia (Spain), the Vienna-Rust guitar competition, Nikita Koshkin International Guitar Competition, and the Leo Brouwer International Guitar Competition in Havana. Marco Tamayo is active as a recitalist, a member of chamber music ensembles and a regular performer of concertos for guitar and orchestra.

Marco Tamayo started playing guitar at the age of three, was hailed as a prodigy at the age of six and his first European tour took place in Europe at age 10!

As a teacher he has taught at the most prestigious educational institutions including the Mozarteum in Salzburg; he recently was selected from 400 competing guitarists to be appointed Professor at Universität der Künste Berlin. Guitarist from all around the globe have joined his class there.
Tamayo’s book “Essential Principles for the interpretation on the Classical Guitar” changed the approach to classical guitar teaching around the world. He is the Artistic Director of the Michele Pittaluga International Guitar Competition (since 1999, the year in which he won the competition himself), and director and founder of the Klagenfurt Int. Competition and Festival in Austria.

Marco Tamayo is currently performing on a guitar built by US luthier Stephen Connor.

Marco Tamayo is a Savarez Artist and Chairman of Marco Tamayo Edition, a publishing house he created in 2014.

Classical Guitarist, Latin Grammy®️ Award Winner, Associate Professor of Berklee College of Music

With a renowned international trajectory, praise for Berta includes the Washington Post´s “…guitarist extraordinaire” and Classical Guitar Magazine´s “…ambassador of the classical guitar.”

Her album, Legado (2022), garnered two Latin Grammy awards. One, in the category of Best Classical Album, and another for the work entitled “Anido’s Portrait” written for the album by Sergio Assad, receiving the statuette for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Berta has been nominated to the Latin Grammy on three other occasions: in the category of Best Tango Album for History of Tango (2015), recorded with the Camerata Bariloche; in the category of Best Classical Album for Salsa Roja (2014); and in the category of Best Instrumental Album for Día y Medio – A Day and a Half, a duo with Paquito D’Rivera (2012).

Berta’s acknowledged warmth and musicality have earned her the admiration of audiences at major venues worldwide: the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Frederick P. Rose Hall of Jazz at the Lincoln Center, 92Y in New York, London’s South Bank Centre, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the National Concert Hall in Dublin, where she performed as a soloist with the Irish Radio and Television Orchestra, and the Flagey Studio 4 in Brussels, where she performed with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra for Belgian National Television.

She has recently joined the prestigious Berklee College of Music as Associate Professor, sharing her knowledge and love of music with a select group of young guitarists from all over the world.

A multiple prize winner in many guitar competitions, Colombian guitarist Francisco Correa has performed concertos with orchestra on both sides of the Atlantic, and has appeared on Colombian, British and French radio & television. His debut CD Música de la Tierrita received high acclaim in renowned guitar publications Guitare Classique, Soundboard and Classical Guitar Magazine.

Career highlights include performing the Aranjuez Concerto with the Grammy-winning Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Latin-American premier of Steve Goss’s Guitar Concerto (2012) with Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia.

A passionate advocate of new music, Francisco collaborates with renowned composers to create, record and premiere new works for guitar. He won the 2020 Ibermúsicas funding award to commission and premiere the Suite Warmikuna by Ecuadorian composer Pedro Barreiro, and is currently working with celebrated Welsh composer Stephen Goss on a series of 12 preludes for guitar (Winterbourne Preludes).

‘Equally comfortable gliding through brisk, virtuosic numbers, heartfelt songs, Correa is one of Colombia’s top classical guitarists, Highly recommended!.’ Classical Guitar Magazine

Tom Kerstens, IGF Artistic Director, is a major figure in the world of the guitar, highly regarded as a versatile performer on both modern and period instruments and an influential champion of the guitar in his roles as player, recording artist and artistic director. He was recently chosen in Classic FM’s list of the ‘100 best classical artists’ and ‘Five best guitarists’ whilst hailed as a “refreshing musical explorer”.

Since 1994, Tom Kerstens has led IGF (International Guitar Foundation) as Artistic Director, IGF’s main showcase festivals London Guitar Festival, IGF Guitar Summit, Bath Guitar Festival and North East Guitar Festival have established themselves as amongst the foremost in Europe and have confirmed Kerstens’ reputation as an artist and artistic director of rare qualities. He has commissioned 118 new works for guitar from leading composers including 3 concertos.
Cecilia Rodrigo awarded him the prestigious Joaquín Rodrigo commemorative medal for his ‘outstanding contribution to the dissemination of Rodrigo’s work’.

Collaborations have included a host of leading British orchestras and ensembles and in addition he has formed his own ensemble called G Plus which is dedicated to especially commissioned new music for guitar in a varying chamber ensemble context. The G Plus Ensemble’s debut CD Utopia was made in Peter Gabriel’s famous Real World studios and garnered great critical acclaim. He has recorded 9 highly acclaimed CDs for BGS Records, Real World Records, BMG and EMI.

‘Tom Kerstens is in a rather different league…he manages to make the guitar sound like a harp, a human voice or even a whole orchestra…his interpretations continue to amaze… Vivid, colourful guitar playing.’
 BBC Radio 3

Stephen Goss’s music receives hundreds of performances worldwide each year. It has been recorded on over 80 CDs by more than a dozen record labels, including EMI, Decca, Telarc, Virgin Classics, Naxos, and Deutsche Grammophon. His output embraces multiple genres: orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and solo pieces.

Goss’s work is marked by a fascination with time and place – both immediate and remote – and the musical styles that evoke them. In many of his compositions, contrasting styles are juxtaposed through abrupt changes of gear. His compositional voice is shaped by his parallel career as a guitarist – that is to say, as a performer, transcriber, arranger, improviser and collaborator with other composers and performers. Not surprisingly, his music often tests the boundaries between all these activities and original composition.

Several of Goss’s recent projects have involved the legendary guitarist John Williams, including his Guitar Concerto, which Williams recorded and played on tour with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Some of the world’s leading orchestras to have performed his works include The Russian National Orchestra (under Mikhail Pletnev), The China National Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, The State Symphony Orchestra ‘New Russia’, The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.

Commissions have come from guitarists David Russell, Miloš Karadaglić and Xuefei Yang (including chamber works with cellist Natalie Clein and tenor Ian Bostridge). Goss has also collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Alt-J, and Avi Avital. As a guitarist, he has worked with Takemitsu, Henze, Peter Maxwell Davies and Elliott Carter, and toured and recorded extensively with the Tetra Guitar Quartet, various other ensembles, and as a soloist.

Stephen Goss is Chair of Composition at the University of Surrey (UK), Director of the International Guitar Research Centre, and a Professor of Guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, an honour limited to 300 living people. He was born in Wales on 2nd February 1964.