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Oscar Ghiglia
Oscar Ghiglia was born in 1938 in Livorno, Italy, to a pianist mother and a painter father. While attending Rome's Santa Cecilia Convervatory, he participated in Segovia's summer master classes in Siena and Santiago de Compostela. His graduation from the Conservatory in 1962 was followed by several important awards: First Prize in the Orense Guitar Competition, First Prize in the Santiago de Compostela Guitar Competition and First Prize in the Radio France International Guitar Competition.
In 1964, Andrés Segovia invited Ghiglia to be his assistant in master classes in California. Since then, Oscar Ghiglia has given concerts and masterclasses throughout the world. In addition to appearing extensively in all parts of North and South America and Europe, he is a frequent performer in the Far East, Israel, Argentina, New Zealand and the South Pacific, and has recorded for Angel and Nonesuch Records.
While being active as a concert artist, Ghiglia has always favored teaching as a sister profession. Very few well-known guitarists today have not at one time or another been in his classes and profited from his lessons. Oscar Ghiglia is currently professor of guitar at the Basel Music-Akademie where he teaches post-graduate students and gives summer courses in Europe, America and the Middle East. He established the classical guitar summer program at Aspen, CO, and taught there for twenty years. He now regularly gives summer classes at the Festival d'Arc in southern France, at the Chigi Academy in Siena, Italy, and at the Festival Garnanno (Italy).
Elena Papandreou
Elena Papandreou was born in Athens on 7th March 1966. She studied the guitar with Evangelos Boudounis at the National Conservatory and graduated in 1985 with honours. She gave her first concert at the age of 15. She continued her studies with Gordon Crosskey at the Royal Northern College of Music, England, on a British Council scholarship, obtaining the Diploma in Advanced Studies in Musical Performance (1986). She also had lessons with Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz, Julian Bream, Leo Brouwer and Ruggero Chiesa.
She has won the First Prize in three International Competitions, "Maria Callas" (Greece), "Gargnano" (Italy), "Alessandria" (Italy) and the Second Prize in the "Guitar Foundation of America" Competition. In the latter she was also awarded the "NAXOS" Prize, which gave her the opportunity to record two personal CDs with this company while she had previously released five other records. Since 2001 she collaborates with the Swedish BIS where she already released two CDs (works by N. Koshkin and R. Dyens). In 1992 she was honoured by the Academy of Athens with the "Spyros Motsenigos" Prize - a most important prize that is awarded to one outstanding performer every two years. Elena Papandreou has performed in most European countries, as well as in the U.S.A., Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Japan. Within the "Rising Stars" program of the "European Concert Hall Organisation" (ECHO), she gave concerts in some of the most prestigious halls in Europe, the Vienna Musikverein, the Koelner Philharmonie, the Birmingham Symphony Hall and the Athens Concert Hall. She has also played in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow and the Queen Elisabeth Hall in London. She frequently tours the U.S.A. and in 1998 she gave her Carnegie Hall debut in New York.
She has collaborated with outstanding musicians, the guitarists Alirio Diaz, Oscar Ghiglia, Roland Dyens, Nikita Koshkin, Evangelos Boudounis and Yorgos Mouloudakis, the violinists Leonidas Kavakos and Gerardo Ribeiro, the singers Vasso Papantoniou, Herbert Lippert and Nena Venetsanou and the flutist Stella Gadedi. Elena Papandreou has played as a soloist with the State Orchestras of Athens and Thessaloniki, the Camerata Orchestra, the Orchestra of Colours, the Orchestra of Patras and the Orchestra of Alessandria, Italy. Performances of hers were recorded by the Greek Television and Radio, Radio France, Deutsche Welle and the Turkish Television.
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