2007 Barrios Competition Results

[nylon6]

Barrios Competition 2007 - Final Results

"Agustin Barrios" International Guitar Competition final results:

International Jury
President: Alvaro Company (ITALY)
Mark Delpriora (USA)
Cristiano Porqueddu (ITALY)
Carlos Molina (USA)
Luigi Biscaldi (ITALY)

Finalist:
Noriyuki Masuda (JAPAN)
Laszo Szabo (HUNGARY)

Special Prize "Agustin Barrios": Not assigned
I° Prize: Not assigned
II° Prize: Not assigned
III° Prize: Noriyuki Masuda (JAPAN)


OK, how does such a result occur? If there is no first or second place, how do they determine a third? Do they decide, "Well, this guy plays badly enough to warrant a third place in our abstract scale of greatness!" Seems weird. Were the players that bad this year?

[Guillermo Rosado]

Barrios Competition 2007 - Final Results

"Agustin Barrios" International Guitar Competition final results:

International Jury
President: Alvaro Company (ITALY)
Mark Delpriora (USA)
Cristiano Porqueddu (ITALY)
Carlos Molina (USA)
Luigi Biscaldi (ITALY)

Finalist:
Noriyuki Masuda (JAPAN)
Laszo Szabo (HUNGARY)

Special Prize "Agustin Barrios": Not assigned
I° Prize: Not assigned
II° Prize: Not assigned
III° Prize: Noriyuki Masuda (JAPAN)


OK, how does such a result occur? If there is no first or second place, how do they determine a third? Do they decide, "Well, this guy plays badly enough to warrant a third place in our abstract scale of greatness!" Seems weird. Were the players that bad this year?

Hi Nylon6:
EXACTLY the same happens in México.
That´s EXACTLY the reason I no longer attend competitions.
It must be very frustrating for the "winner" of the third/first place..don´t You think ??

Un abrazo
Willy

[Libre]

I guess since I declined to compete, and Barrios himself was indisposed, they held both 1st and 2nd place open, respectively.

[Syd]

Just imagine that when the final whistle blows on the Super Bowl game the League officials decide to not award the trophy this year because the quality of play in the game was not up to the standard set by last year's game, what with there being this year 3 unforced fumbles and 21 missed blocking assignments and 33 missed tackles and one ejection for throwing a helmet at the referee.

I suppose that the rationale for refusing to award a first or second prize is that the participants did not play to the "standard" that the jury and organisers and sponsors set. I wonder if those people realize that one implication of their decision might be that they and the event itself do not have a reputation that would attract the players with the talent to "deserve" a first or second prize. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, do they not imply that they are the club that talented players would not want to join?

Are evnts like this a music festival type of competition to encourage performance and entertain audiences or are they really a training camp used to select players for a concert or recording contract?

[condeclaro]

Checking out their website it looks like last year it was Illarionov 1st and Krivokapic 2nd. Good luck maintaining those standards every year.

[Sandra]

That just seems silly to me. And according to GFA (http://www.guitarfoundation.org/drupal/node/3528), in 2004 they awarded... no prizes at all!

How anti-climactic for all the participants and the audience as well. How good is it for the image of the "Competition" if no one is good enough to win it?

A musical performance is a very subjective thing. Unlike athletic events, where achievement in the long jump or pole vault can be measured in feet and inches. What if the Olympics were like this competition? "Sorry, you did make the longest shot put of all the contestants here, but it wasn't good enough for a gold or silver medal, so all you get is the bronze."

[Guitar Slim]

Checking out their website it looks like last year it was Illarionov 1st and Krivokapic 2nd. Good luck maintaining those standards every year.


Just so. In the US they give out an Academy Award every year for Best Motion Picture. Certainly the quality of the winner varies from year to year (The Godfather vs. Rocky?). The best film of the decade only comes along -- well, once a decade! But that doesn't mean they decline to hand out the award just because nothing produced that year came up to the standard of Citizen Kane (yes, I know it didn't win an Oscar, but you get my point!)

I don't know the whole story but -- it seems pretty low to me. If a competitor failed to meet the requirements of the competition, then he or she shouldn't have been in the competition in the first place. One presumes all of the entrants met the requirements and made the cut, so it seems only fair to choose the 1st, 2nd and 3rd best competitors from that year's field. And certainly the result is a slap in the face to the finalists. Let's crush the egos of the young performers, just so we can preserve the egos of the organizers and the judges!

[Perf_de_Castro]

Summa Cum Laude isn't awarded to a person with 3.00 GPA even if his/her GPA is the highest amongst the graduating batch.

Competitors are graded and prizes are awarded according the grade points averaged. This way the competitors don't compete against each other but rather against the standards set by the competition's organizers and by the judges. If everybody played excellently and all the judges agree, then everybody could get 1st place.

[Antinous]

In other words competitions aren't graded on a curve.

[iberianwolf]

One of my favorites:
"The only thing one needs to know about music competitions is that Mozart never won one."
Anon.