1st Annual LA Guitar Festival

We wanted to congratulate the winners of the 1st annual Los Angeles Guitar Festival, and also to congratulate our friend Tavi Jinariu for organizing a really wonderful event and pulling it off with style! We have no doubt that there will be a 2nd Annual Los Angeles Guitar Festival next year and that it will be even bigger and better!

This year’s festival featured workshops by Taso Comanescu, Ines Thome, Chris Garwood and myself, as well as concerts by Ines Thome, Taso Comanescu and Scott Tennant. There were competitions for young guitarists in two divisions – junior and senior – and the competition was judged by Taso, Ines, Tavi, myself and GSI president David Collett. Tavi also condicted a guitar orchestra featuring all participants in the festival.

The winner of the competition in the senior division was Alex Kim, with 2nd place going to Harrison Nguyen and 3rd place to Evelyn Nguyen. In the junior division Dylan Cheah took the top prize with 2nd place going to Luke Kim and 3rd place going to Ela Simcic. It was wonderful to hear these young musicians perform and we were quite impressed by the level of musicianship displayed. The winners walked away with new GSI Studio Series guitars and Cordoba guitars, provided by GSI and Cordoba. We definitely look forward to doing this again next year!