By: Dr. Matt Warnock
As the 2010 summer guitar camp season quickly approaches guitarists, both professional and non-professional alike, are gearing up to hit the road and spend a few days, or weeks, studying and jamming at countless workshops across the country. With so many camps and workshops to choose from it’s often hard to figure out which workshop will give students the best bang for the buck, and will be best geared towards their playing level, style and musical tastes.
While many of the established workshops are well known to students and teachers around the U.S., some of the newer workshops are gaining widespread attention as they enter their first summer season. One of the workshops that is drawing considerable attention from the guitar world is the Austin Peay State University Summer Guitar Workshop in Clarksville, Tennessee, hosted by world-class guitarist, author and educator Dr. Stanley Yates.
Dr. Yates describes the APSU Summer Guitar Workshop as “a five-day course for classical and acoustic finger-style guitarists of all levels. Participants will work daily with distinguished artist-faculty in the style of their choice, either classical or acoustic finger-style. Activities are streamed according to playing style and playing level, and include daily technique sessions, master-classes, ensemble rehearsals, special lecture sessions, and evening concert performances. All participants will also have the opportunity to perform in the end-of-workshop ensemble concert.”
Alongside the week-long workshop there will be a competition in which students can participate. There are three divisions of the competition, pre-collegiate finger-style, pre-collegiate classical and collegiate-post-collegiate classical guitar. Winners will be awarded cash prizes and first-place winners in the pre-collegiate divisions will also be given free tuition for next year’s workshop.
Dr. Stanley Yates recently sat down with Guitar International Magazine to give us a quick overview of this year’s workshop. Additional information on the workshop, competition, registration and all other related material can be found at the workshop’s homepage.
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Matt Warnock: What was the inspiration behind starting the Austin Peay State University Summer Guitar Workshop, and how has planning for the inaugural run been so far?
Dr. Stanley Yates: I’ve been thinking about holding a workshop at APSU for some time, having been involved with so many other guitar workshops over the years, and the opportunity for significant university backing came up recently, so I jumped on it.
Also, since I’m currently on sabbatical leave for creative work I had the time available to do the careful planning an event like this really needs. I have to say, there’s a lot of work in setting up something like this, but so far I’ve had a lot of support from everyone involved in the project. So things are going very well.
Matt: The workshop is a week long. Can you give us a brief outline of what participants will be doing throughout the week?
Stanley: The workshop is intended to be very intensive and as hands-on as possible. It’s not an event where a few participants play in a master-class and everyone else watches. All workshop participants take part in daily technique sessions and ensemble rehearsals, and have the opportunity to perform in at least one of five daily master-classes.
Also, all participants will perform in a participant’s ensemble concert at the end of the week. There will also be the traditional lecture sessions and evening faculty concerts.
Matt: The workshop is geared towards classical and finger-style players, what level of ability do people need to have in order to attend the workshop in either genre?
Stanley: I feel that the distinction between classical guitar and finger-style guitar is a bit artificial, and I also feel that players in each style can learn from the other. While the workshop is divided into two streams, one for each style, I’m hoping for significant interaction between the two as well.
The workshop is geared toward players of all experience levels and ages, and most of the activities will be streamed toward playing level and experience, beginner, intermediate and advanced.
Matt: Can you talk a bit about some of the faculty that will be at this year’s workshop?
Stanley: I’m very pleased with the artist-faculty I’ve been able to line up for this event. There are, of course, a number of players I’d love to use for an event like this, but I feel the line-up for this first year is exceptionally good and well balanced.
On the classical side we have Stephen Aron and Mir Ali, along with myself, of course, both of whom are very experienced teachers, concert performers and festival organizers themselves.
On the finger-style side, I have our adjunct APSU guitar program faculty member and Fingerstyle Magazine columnist Roger Hudson, along with National Finger-style Champion Richard Smith. We also have another National Finger-style Champion, Tim Thompson, who will play and present a workshop session, along with the Huston-Todd classical guitar duo, which will perform and help out with the competition judging.
Matt: You mentioned the competition that’s being held during the workshop. Can you talk about the different levels of the competition and what people should expect to prepare in order to enter the competition?
Stanley: We have three competitions: two pre-collegiate, one classical, one finger-style, and a collegiate-post-collegiate classical guitar competition, with an attractive first prize. I’ve been involved in a lot of competitions over the years and my feeling is that these things need to allow the competitors to show their skills and artistry without unnecessary restrictions. For this reason, we simply ask competitors to submit a proposed final round program of contrasting repertoire totaling a certain amount of time.
I personally don’t feel that it’s necessary to have everyone play a set piece, except maybe for very high-level international competitions. So it’s easy for competitors to enter and put their best foot forward.
I’d also like to mention that isn’t necessary for competitors to sign up for the workshop in order to take part in the collegiate competition, although this is necessary for the pre-collegiate competitions.
Matt: What are some of the prizes that will be awarded to the competition winners?
Stanley: The collegiate competition first prize is $2000, with over $1000 in total for second and third prizes, the pre-collegiate first prizes are $500 plus free tuition for next years workshop.
We also have additional prizes donated by Mel Bay Publications, La Bella Strings and Fingerstyle Magazine, with others to be announced on the website shortly.
Matt: How do people sign up for the workshop and-or the competition?
Stanley: Everything can be found online at www.StanleyYates.com/workshop, including workshop and competition information, events schedule, artist-faculty bios, fees and registration forms.
Matt: As you a preparing for the first annual APSU Summer Guitar Workshop, do you see this event continuing in the future?
Stanley: Arranging an event like this takes a lot of thought and energy, so it would be a shame to do it only once! We hope this will become a significant annual guitar event.
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Links
APSU Guitar Workshop Homepage
Mel Bay presents Modern Classical Guitar Method, Grade 1 (Stanley Yates)
Mel Bay presents Graded Repertoire for Guitar Book One (Stanley Yates Series)
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- Interview with National Guitar Workshop President Dave Smolover
- Dan K Custom Guitar Workshop Video Tour
- The National Guitar Workshop Makes Scholarships Available to Deserving Students
- Guitar Workshop and Festival Brings World Class Talent to Northwest Montana
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