Don’t miss out on your last chance to enter the WYGF09 Guitar Competition in association with Trinity Guildhall. We already have some fabulous entries (including some Russian Bears!) which can be viewed on our very own WYGFTV channel on YouTube, so if you’re working on your final version then hurry, hurry, hurry.

In case you missed out on the competition launch earlier this year (where were you?!) we are looking for winning performances of our set works, all taken from the Trinity Guildhall syllabus. We would like you to upload videos of yourselves playing your entry to our YouTube WYGF channel and then the composers themselves will be selecting three finalists in each category who will each have their video performances shown at WYGF09 in front of our grand jury.  The prizes will be an individual lesson with the composer and a WYGF goodie bag.

So, the set-pieces are:

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Here at the World Youth Guitar Festival (WYGF) we work hard to make our festival as affordable as possible and with 4 days of coaching, workshops and lessons, concerts from 4 inspirational guest artists, student showcase concerts and most importantly, the final WYGF concert too, we really do cram an awful lot in.

The Arts Circus, the charity behind WYGF feels it is vitally important to make the festival accessible to as many as possible so the bursary scheme was a natural way to assist those students who would otherwise struggle to attend. Our funds are limited but we are able to offer bursaries ranging from a 40% reduction to scholarships for a fully assisted place. These awards are not based on musical ability or performing experience, but purely on financial need. But you’re going to have to be quick as the deadline for this year’s applications is rapidly approaching on 1st April, so if you feel you are eligible then please do have a look at our guidelines and application form below. Click and download - it’s as simple as that!

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Now we are officially in the year of WYGF we are really excited to announce the launch of our WYGF competition. What started off life as a Gary Ryan competition, offering our students the chance to win an individual lesson with Gary at the festival as well as loads of ‘Gary Goodies’ (no, these are not his own range of organic biscuits in the shape of a guitar, but a bundle of CDs and fab guitar-prizes) has now mutated into something even more wondrous, with not one, not two, but five competitions featuring Vincent Lindsey-Clark, Peter Nuttall and even yours truly. I can tell you’re all desperate to know exactly how you are going to have a chance of getting your mitts on all of this - so here’s how you do it.

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Plans for WYGF09 will be hotting up in the New Year and here on the WYGF website you will be able to keep up to date with all our news, so please SUBSCRIBE if you haven’t done so already either by RSS feed (see that cute little orange button on the right hand side?!) or register your email address instead and we’ll save you the trouble of visiting us and all the latest from WYGF will magically appear in your inbox.

Just to whet your appetite; website features we will be running in the New Year include …

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I remember going back to school after the long Summer holidays and and being asked by my English teacher, Mrs Cartledge (who was rather strict, and more than a little bit scary) to write a story entitled A day in the life of a penny. Needless to say mine involved a rather predictable but nevertheless dramatic, tumble from a pocket into the gutter, down the drain and into the murky sewers below. I have absolutely no idea how the story ended now, and I very much doubt that it is ingrained in Mrs Cartledge’s memory either, but I’m going to re-live the experience somewhat by giving you all a glimpse of A day in the life of a WYGF student!

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On September 6th, the Eden Stell Guitar Duo gave a workshop and joint concert with the Corinium Players, a group of young guitarists, aided and abetted by a few equally enthusiastic adults from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, UK.  This workshop also provided an opportunity to ‘fine-tune’ the ensemble’s programme and optimise their chances of achieving a winning place at the GOFI contest in Germany which they were competing in later that month (GOFI blog coming soon).

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WYGF’s first recording

Before WYGF’s conception, Artistic Directors Mark Eden and Christopher Stell, Eden Stell Guitar Duo, had recently returned from performing in Australia where they met John Casey, Musical Director of the extraordinary youth guitar ensemble from Perth, Guitarstrophe! The ensemble had made quite an impression on the duo previously, winning the Calderdale Guitar Ensemble Competition which the duo had adjudicated.

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One of the ensembles coming back for more are the rather wonderful National Youth Guitar Ensemble. Led by artistic director, Gerald Garcia they joined forces with the Australian super-ensemble Guitarstrophe! to record a CD directly after the main festival last year. The CD Festive Fizz was launched earlier this year at the Winchester Guitar Festival (WGF) and we shall be featuring the CD on this site soon.

Playing in NYGE is a fabulous experience for young guitarists and their new coordinator, Liz Larner, recently got in touch to tell us more about the group.

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In homage to the great Cuban guitarist and composer Leo Brouwer we created the ‘Big Brouwer Diary Room’ as one of the little extras at WYGF07. It was here that students were able to go and air their opinions on the festival, but of course the serious questions were far outweighed by more important issues such as ‘Superman, Batman or Gary Ryan?’

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After the huge success of the first ever World Youth Guitar Festival in 2007, we are thrilled to announce that WYGF09 will take place from 11-14 August 2009.

We are moving venues to Dean Close School in Cheltenham which not only boasts superb facilities, but also the 560 capacity Bacon Theatre for the WYGF International Recital Series and WYGF Student Concert.

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