{"id":14043,"date":"2019-11-18T09:29:20","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T17:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=14043"},"modified":"2019-11-18T09:29:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T17:29:59","slug":"indiana-competition-crowns-winners-says-farewell-to-founder-ernesto-bitetti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/indiana-competition-crowns-winners-says-farewell-to-founder-ernesto-bitetti\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Competition Crowns Winners, Says Farewell to Founder Ernesto Bitetti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last weekend of October, the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Guitar Department hosted its 10th annual Indiana International Guitar Festival and Competition<\/strong>. This year was particularly exciting, as the featured guest artists were none other than the legendary duo, S\u00e9rgio and Odair Assad. It is also special to note that this was final Festival at Jacobs for Ernesto Bitetti\u2014 founder and head of the Jacobs Guitar Department\u2014as he is retiring at the end of the upcoming Spring semester. Bitetti started the guitar program at Jacobs 30 years ago, and has overseen its growth and development into a top program; a remarkable legacy.<\/p>\n

A number of talented competitors traveled from across the country to participate in the Open Division, Senior Youth, and Junior Youth competitions. The Jacobs guitar students volunteered their time over the weekend to ensure that the festival ran smoothly and efficiently. Austin Wahl (USA) took first prize in the open division, with his impressive performance of Joaquin Rodrigo\u2019s Junto al Generalife<\/em>, the Allegro<\/em> from J.S. Bach\u2019s Violin Sonata in C Major, BWV 1005<\/em>, and Robert Beaser\u2019s Shenandoah<\/em>. All are quite technically demanding works.<\/p>\n

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Austin Wahl, First Prize in Open Division<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christopher Mrofchak (USA) took second, Yunxiang Fan (China) took third and Bruno Gauthier-Bellerose (Canada) took 4th. The judges included Atanas Tzvetkov, Elisabeth Wright, Luke Gillespie, Elzbieta Szmyt, and Ernesto Bitetti.
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Top: Second prize winner Christopher Mrofchak; Below (L-R): Bruno Gauthier-Bellerose, Yunxiang Fan, Christopher Mrofchak, and Austin Wahl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Liam Hedrick took first prize in the Senior Youth competition. Chaz Privette took second, Teodor Georgiev took third and Landon Vandergriff took fourth. Nick Bonn placed first in the Junior Youth division.<\/p>\n

On Sunday night, the Assad Brothers performed an incredibly virtuosic and expressive concert to a packed Auer Hall at JSoM. Their program featured an exciting variety of Latin American and Spanish music, including Astor Piazzolla\u2019s Zita,<\/em> Radam\u00e9s Gnattali\u2019s Valsa <\/em>and Corta Jaca, <\/em>Joaqu\u00edn Rodrigo\u2019s Tonadilla, <\/em>Ant\u00f4nio Carlos Jobim\u2019s Cr\u00f4<\/em>nica da casa assassinada,<\/em> and S\u00e9rgio Assad\u2019s Suite Brasileira.<\/em><\/p>\n

After the concert, Petar Jankovic presided over the award ceremony where all sponsors and prizewinners were acknowledged. Jeremy Allen, Executive Dean of the Jacobs School of Music, also announced that beginning in fall 2020, a different teaching artist-in-residence will join full-time faculty Petar Jankovic and Daniel Duarte each semester at the school.\u00a0 Jacobs’ own Ernesto Bitetti, will inaugurate the position after his retirement in May and then S\u00e9rgio Assad will be the teaching artist in residence sin spring 2021. \u201cThis is going to be a great experience,\u201d said Assad. \u201cI had promised myself that I was going to stop teaching after I left San Francisco, but I\u2019m so close to Bloomington [Indiana, where JSoM is located] now that I live in Chicago, and working with the students and faculty at the Jacobs School of Music has been very rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, the JSoM guitar students had the opportunity to have a lunch Q&A session with S\u00e9rgio at JSoM\u2019s Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development, as well as a masterclass with S\u00e9rgio and Odair in the evening. At the lunch, S\u00e9rgio discussed various aspects of his career, including how he and Odair first found success as a duo, his compositional outlook and process, and where he sees the future of the guitar world. He spoke of the importance of blending genres\u2014for instance, popular music and classical music\u2014to create new and exciting works and arrangements to further the development of the classical guitar repertoire.<\/p>\n