10 Year Impact Report: Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival

Calcutta Classical Guitar Society

2010 - 2019 CALCUTTA INTERNATIONAL CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL

10 years OF CLASSICAL GUITAR IN KOLKATA

2010 Nikita Koshkin • Pavel Steidl • Marcin Dylla • Gabriel Bianco • Denis Azabagic • Eugenia Moliner • Cavatina Duo • Frank Bungarten • Carle Costa • Asya Selyutina • José Antonio Escobar & Javier Contreras • Johannes Möller • Duo NIHZ • Nutavut Ratnakarn

2011 Denis Azabagic • Eugenia Moliner • Cavatina Duo • Adam Del Monte • AKGI Duo • U Rajesh • Ionah • Mainak “Bumpy” Nag Chowdhury • Bertie Da Silva • Amyt Datta • Kala Ramnath • Triokala • Soulful Journey • Sounds of Bengal

2012 David Russell • Pavel Steidl • Zoran Dukic • Denis Azabagic • Cavatina Duo • Judicaël Perroy • Jérémy Jouve • Johannes Möller • Giampaolo Bandini • Cesare Chiacchiretta • Civitas Ensemble (Yuan-Qing Yu, Joseph Johnson, Kathleen Brauer, Catherine Brubake) • Kala Ramnath • Indo-Dutch Trio (Shubhendra Rao, Saskia Rao de Haas, Gwyneth Wentink) • Pt Debashish Bhattacharya

2013 Denis Azabagic • Johannes Möller • András Csáki • Bobby Rootveld • Sanna van Elst • Amyt Datta • Rahul Guha Roy

2014 Roland Dyens • Cavatina Duo (Denis Azabagic & Eugenia Moliner) • Marcin Dylla • Johannes Möller • Daniel Marquez • Amadeus Duo (Dale Kavanagh & Thomas Kirschoff) • Simon Cheong

2015 Ekachai Jearakul • Leon Koudelak • Kevin Loh • Monching Carpio • Matt Bacon • Joey Woch & Norman Vilas • Shyamant Behal

2016 David Russell • Johannes Möller feat.

Arindam Chakravarty • Daniel & Pablo Zapico • Jose Manuel Dapena • Lautaro Favaloro • Indialucia • The String Fraternity: (Ehsaan Noorani & Purbayan Chatterjee) • Trilogy (Subhen Chatterjee’s KARMA feat. Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt & Amyt Datta) • Aakash Saha

2017 Pavel Steidl • Marcin Dylla • Johannes Möller • Miguel Trapaga • Le Maestrio • Trilogy (Subhen Chatterjee’s KARMA feat. Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt & Amyt Datta)

2018 Raphaella Smits • Gary Ryan • Johannes Möller • Javier Somoza • Thu Le • Lorenzo Bernardi • Ricardo J Martins & Fernando Ponte • Máté Palásti

2019 David Russell • European Guitar Quartet • Pavel Steidl • Zoran Dukic • Grigoryan Brothers • Seville Guitar Duo • Duo Kitharsis • Vi Blau • Hugo Gamboias • Diogo Passos • Lautaro Tissera • Ser o Duo

India’s only Asia’s largest T

he first Calcutta International Guitar Festival & Competition was held in December 2010.

Spread over 5 days, featuring 15 concerts, it hosted the biggest names from the international classical guitar world, and honoured the Russian guitarist and composer Nikita Koshkin.

For an instrument that hasn’t many composers, Koshkin is a contemporary hero with an idiosyncratic compositional style and celebrated pieces including the cult Usher Waltz. The fact that Koshkin was in Kolkata along with over 25 other renowned guitarists, made this not just the only festival of its kind in India, but the largest in all of Asia.

The finalists of the 2010 competition are now internationally recognised professional guitarists The Competition that year was open to all nationalities and offered a first prize of 5000 USD and total prize money of 14000 USD. This, along with the fabulous line up of featured guitarists who were performing concerts and teaching masterclasses, attracted excellent guitar students from across the world and ensured the competition was of a high international standard.

Most of the finalists of the 2010 competition are now recognised professional guitarists: professors at universities and known concert artistes.

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Isolated existence

nternationally, the classical guitar community is quite insular. Since the guitar is not a regular part of an orchestra, pursuing this instrument seriously can be an isolating experience. Most of the repertoire is for guitar solo.

In 2010, most Indian classical guitarists were even more musically isolated.

There was no way to study classical guitar formally in the country. The only option we had was to get private tuitions for the instrument from a teacher who most probably had no real education of classical guitar either. Live concerts were rare. Once a year at the very most, the embassy of a European country would sponsor a classical guitarist on a 4 or 5 city tour of India. CDs were expensive, and even the best music store in the country would keep no more than 2 or 3 albums of solo classical guitar. In 2010, YouTube existed, but music streaming apps like Spotify didn’t.

TOP LEFT: Maestro Nikita Koshkin gives Marko Topchii a masterclass (2010). A D’Addario sponsored guitarist, Topchii now is a professional concert musician and highly sought after teacher of masterclasses and juror of competitions.

TOP RIGHT: Guitar students with Maestro Roland Dyens, the celebrated French guitarist and composer in 2014.

FACING PAGE: Marcin Dylla at an individual masterclass, teaching one student while others observe the lesson.

Transformative experiences F Being in close proximity with international conservatory students made us understand what it took to pursue the instrument seriously

or Indian classical guitarists, to come to Kolkata and watch so many guitar concerts, take lessons from the people we had only heard of or owned recordings of - was something even a few months before would have been unthinkable.

By experiencing the best, our own imagination of what was possible on our instrument expanded.

The competition was a transformative experience too. Being in close proximity

with conservatory students who were competing made us understand what it took to pursue the instrument seriously. None of us had a chance in the competition. But everyone was profoundly impacted.

This format of the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival international competition, concerts and masterclasses continued till 2014. Though the scale and grandeur of the first edition has not been replicated since.

Public masterclass by Bolivian guitarist Pirai Vaca at the Delhi International Classical Guitar Festival, 2015

The possibility of expansion I In December 2015 guitar festivals were held simultaneously in Kolkata, Bangalore and Delhi

n 2015, we looked at ways of expanding.

The year was spent networking with classical guitarists across the country, suggesting that they form local associations of classical guitarists.

That December we looked at the best musicians from Asia, and instead of having just the one festival in Kolkata, enabled simultaneous guitar festivals Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata - each with its own local competition. For various reasons, especially financial, we could not continue this format and the following year, the festival returned to Kolkata.

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Spanish guitar for Indian students

TOP RIGHT: 2016 winner, Dipankar Singh taking a masterclass with Ricardo Gallen TOP LEFT: 2017 winner Abhigya Bharati interviewed in Dario Cรณrdoba BOTTOM RIGHT: 2018 winner Deepak Ponmudi and his batchmates for the Margarita Escarpa guitar course

n 2016, there was no money for an international competition. While this meant a reduced participant base, it allowed us to focus on Indian classical guitarists and their needs. The Embassy of Spain in India along with the Instituto Cervantes put together a wonderful prize for our national classical guitar competition.

The winner receives a full scholarship to attend the Cordoba Guitar Festival in Spain, as well as a formal recital at the Instituto Cervantes New Delhi.

Now in its 4th year, this prize too has been growing and includes a collaboration with Alhambra Guitars (the winner receives a full tour of the Workshop in Muro de Alcoy Alicante, as well as a professional guitar) and interaction with various conservatories and other music organisations in Spain.

Measuring impact Over the past decade there have been significant tangible changes in the way classical guitar is perceived, listened to and performed.

The first time I came, the hall was empty.

People were talking and moving about.

Now look at it!

Completely full for every concert!!

PAVEL STEIDL 2010, 2012, 2017, 2019

The players have improved, the standard of all the concerts... but also of the students in India.

Over the last six or eight years, the students have become much better. The Festival is also about making contact with guitarists from all over the world.

DAVID RUSSELL 2012, 2016, 2019

The Festival has changed my life. It is what I look forward to most, every year.

It’s opened my eyes to the world and possibilities of the classical guitar. I first went in 2012 when I was 10 and I hope I can keep going for as long as I can!

ANTARA DASGUPTA Student at the Festival since 2012

The way things were Classical guitar didn’t feature because it did not exist.

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here is an inherited colonial tradition of western classical music in India. It exists in urban pockets, usually accessed by the upper class, but also intersects with and embeds itself in the mainstream.

Western classical musicians have always been employed by the film industry, working with music directors to add colour and depth to songs and background scores.

Classical guitar didn’t feature

anywhere on this spectrum, and the biggest reason for this was because it did not exist.

Most ‘first generation’ classical guitarists in this country were self taught. They would have heard the instrument once on the radio, or television or perhaps in a live concert, and immediately changed the course of their life to study it further. While the exact narrative differs, the essence, of being entranced and pursuing the instrument, repeats for guitarists from Kolkata (Shyamal De), Delhi (Jaspal Singh, Shankar Dey), Mumbai (Shiv Mishra), Bangalore (Kenneth Isaac) and Chennai (Thangadurai Samuel). That decisive moment for them would have happened

in the late 80s or early 90s. Before then, classical guitar as a recognised instrument didn’t feature at all.

Fifteen years ago, there were guitarists who learnt from this first generation of musicians, largely focussing on grade exams offered by the Trinity College London or ABRSM. The belief was that to be an all-rounded musician on the guitar, you needed to read music and understand classical theory. It’s safe to say that these music students really couldn’t be compared to their counterparts studying violin or piano. Guitarists didn’t have enough context of what they were playing. More importantly they didn’t have the technique.

Nagaland Classical Guitar Society ensemble perform at Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival.

Audience development The first couple of years the Guitar Festival concert tickets were given away free.

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n 2010, the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival introduced a new form of music to the city. To be fair, it wasn’t the first time classical guitar had been performed here: Julian Bream visited in 1962, and through the years various embassies had sponsored tours, the latest being Berta Rojas from Paraguay in 2009. However, these were oneoff events, and in 2010 the classical guitar was still seen as something rare and exotic, and not very well understood.

The first couple of years the Guitar Festival concert tickets were given away free. People were sent invitation cards and requested to attend the festival. Unaware of the listening etiquette of the genre, there would often be spontaneous bursts of applause through the pieces. A lot of the audience came because of the novelty the art form.

In 2013, each concert was ticketed. However, in a festival where each concert is a classical guitar performance, it was challenging to sell each concert individually. To encourage more sales tickets were bundled together as a season pass, or discounted

with three for the price of two. At that time and till 2015, there was an additional budget for marketing and promotion.

The Festival would hire large hoardings in different parts of the city, and buy newspaper ads.

By our 7th edition, we saw a severe drop in funding.

With much less sponsorship, we had to cut down on advertising and work to prove our relevance. We focussed on selling every ticket for each concert separately and promoted the events only through social media and Whatsapp groups. This was the first time each concert of the festival was houseful.

Since 2016, we’ve never had an empty seat for any concert.

Last year we had 10 ticketed concerts over 4 days. We announced the festival on social media and uploaded the tickets for sale online. Two concerts sold out 3 weeks before the festival began without any promotion at all.

In the last few years, the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival has become a calendar event for the city. The biggest testament to that is the kind of newspaper coverage we have begun to receive.

Instead of running ads or paying for media tie-ups, Calcutta’s leading English daily newspapers sent reporters to attend concerts and write about it. Concert goers look forward to the Festival.

Some people write asking for dates months before so as to plan their travel around it.

At this point, about 10 percent of our tickets sell as soon as we put them up for sale, no matter how many months before the festival.

Standard of performance The quality of performance, both in the technical requirements of pieces selected and their delivery, has increased.

Madhavan Somanathan getting a masterclass from Judicaël Perroy in 2012

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he standard of guitar playing has gone up considerably in the past decade.

Techniques and pieces that were considered of an advanced level are now being played by students who describe themselves (more accurately) as ‘intermediate’ standard.

In 2014, Madhavan Somanathan, won 3rd prize at the prestigious Calcutta International Guitar Festival & Competition, becoming the first Indian guitarist to place at the competition since its inception.

Madhavan was then enrolled in a classical guitar performance degree under French Maestro Judicaël Perroy at the Conservatory of Aubervilliers in France. He had met Perroy in 2012 in Kolkata, and the following year auditioned and got through to this highly sought after place in the conservatory.

But Madhavan, prodigiously gifted, is an outlier. A more accurate understanding of the national standard of guitar playing was possible once the competition became limited to Indians. In the last four years, the quality of performance, both in the pieces selected and their on-stage delivery, has increased. About half of the 2019 finalists are capable of getting through a conservatory entrance exam. This was not the case even 2 years ago. And Jubal Pradhan, winner of the 2019 competition, has been invited to perform at the Festival de guitarra maestro Joaquin Rodrigo in Quartell (Spain). The director of this festival was part of the Calcutta competition jury and impressed by Jubal’s competition performance spontaneously extended this invitation.

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ost western classical musicians in India may not have considered the guitar a classical instrument. It’s not part of the orchestra, and often not considered important enough to be programmed in a serious classical venue. The last time the NCPA (National Centre for Performing Arts), Mumbai hosted a classical guitar recital was in 2014.

In the last few years, young guitarists have started distinguishing themselves within a national context. The Olga & Jules Craen Foundation’s “Young Musician of the Year” (YMOY) is an award for western classical music in any instrument or voice. The winner spends a year being nurtured by the Foundation, receiving scholarships and financial assistance for further training in India or abroad.

This is the only prize offered in the country across disciplines.

The YMOY 2018 and YMOY 2020 are guitar students in their twenties who have been attending the Guitar Festival in Kolkata each December since they were in their early teens.

National recognition

If it weren’t for the Festival, I wouldn’t have taken the guitar this seriously....

Coming here opens up your world to what is possible in a way that the level of teaching in India doesn’t really take you.

KABIR DABHOLKAR

Kabir (from Bangalore) attended his first Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival in 2012 when he was fourteen. Since then, he’s been back each year.

Young professionals: the next generation

ADITYA GANDHI completed his Bachelors of Music with Honors from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and his Masters of Music at the Chicago College of Performing Arts under world-renowned guitarist Denis Azabagic.

In 2016, he returned to his hometown in Ahmedabad to make a career for himself as a performer and teacher.

MADHAVAN SOMANATHAN: After studying under French Maestro JudicaĂŤl Perroy at the Conservatory of Aubervilliers in France from 2013-2017, Madhavan toured with the Terra Guitar Quartet and more recently settled in Delhi where he teaches and performs.

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n the last 10 years, a few young musicians have gone abroad to study classical guitar at the university level or in conservatories.

Now in their mid 20s, these young musicians had their childhood impacted by the festival.

Meeting icons as they were developing as students, they were able to identify mentors,

AAKASH SAHA: Founder of the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society founder and Artistic Director of the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival, Aakash returned to India in 2015 after studying under Denis Azabagic at the Chicago College of Performing Arts, completing his Bachelors of Music. He now teaches and composes from his studio in Ballygunge, as well as from the Indian Guitar Federation Training Centre in Kolkata.

and eventually return to make careers for themselves as professional musicians in India.

In the last decade, the interest for classical guitar had risen, avenues for teaching and performing has increased making this a viable career.

NANDINI SUDHIR is currently studying in at the Royal College of Music, London pursuing an M. Sc in Performance Science. The degree includes music performance, teaching, performers’ health and well-being, as well as the role of performing arts in health and well-being from a psychological and sociological perspective. Her principal instrument is the classical guitar. She intends to return to her hometown in 2020 as faculty of the Bangalore School of Music.

CONSERVATORIES AND DEGREE PROGRAMMES

Developments B in other parts of the country

etween 2011 and 2014, the Bangalore Conservatory, Nagaland Conservatory and Patkai Christian College in Dimapur (Nagaland), all autonomous institutes affiliated with the Christian church, began offering degree programmes for classical guitar. In 2015, the KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, hired an American classical guitarist, Matt Bacon, to head their guitar department and now offer diplomas in guitar performance. For those serious enough to spend years studying the instrument, there were now formal options available within the country, even though the standard was quite different than in the West.

GUITAR SOCIETIES & FESTIVALS

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n 2015, through activities at the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society, we actively encouraged guitarists in different parts of the country to form their own associations.

The Indian Guitar Federation, an informal association of local guitar bodies, was created.

Local guitar societies began regular activities in Pune, Bangalore, Shillong, Nagaland and Imphal. Through this network, it is now easy to plan tours for international musicians in India.

Since 2017, guitarists in the North East of India have requested us to send musicians to their hometowns - Guwahati, Shillong and Imphal. The logic being that while a

dedicated few may come to Kolkata, touring musicians would impact a much larger audience and student base. These festivals have no corporate funding, are entirely run by volunteers and often involve homestays with musicians and their families. Since 2017, we have invited guitarists performing at the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival to extend their stay in India to include outreach concerts at these locations.

Independent of what happens in Calcutta, the Bangalore School of Music and KM Music Conservatory have started guitar festivals of their own, each associated with a competition, workshops and masterclasses.

These are now in their second edition.

Johannes Moller, Lorenzo Bernardi, Thu Le, Ricardo J Fernades & Fernando Ponte at the Prag News TV Studio in Guwahati a day before the 2018 Guwahati International Gutiar Festival.

Social outreach T

hrough the year, the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society runs music education programmes in schools for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and in NGOs. During the Guitar Festival, we invite these students to join us to watch the concerts and when possible, arrange make arrangements for the visiting guitarists to visit these organisations and perform there too.

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The road ahead

he classical guitar is still seen as something relatively new and exciting. Our audience is made of classical music lovers, as well as guitarists and enthusiasts.

While classical music audiences are older and dwindling, in India we’ve experienced interest from people of all ages.

Any classical art form takes years to develop. Over the past decade we’ve seen a significant impact on the serious guitar students.

In the 10th edition, we also looked at engaging young beginners.

One of the biggest success was

the addition of an ensemble workshop for guitarists under twelve years of age. For us, it was especially encouraging to see beginner guitar students as young as six years old look forward to the next lesson, and sit through concerts each day.

There is a clear commitment from the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society to keep the Festival going. In each edition we will continue to make modifications to the festival format, doing our best to remain focussed on our goal: developing and promoting classical guitar in India.

who we are The Calcutta Interntational Classical Guitar Festival is organised by the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society (a non-profit cultural organisation and registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act, to whom donations are exempt under Section 80-G of the Income Tax Act), in association with the Indian Guitar Federation (an informal non-profit association of guitar societies across India). calguitar.in indianguitarfederation.in

THE CALCUTTA INTERNATIONAL CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF OUR PARTNERS OVER THE YEARS