CONCERT OF WONDERFUL GUITAR DUO
ARTURO CASTRO (Puerto Rico/Germany)
and
MIRCEA GOGONCEA (Romania)
Friday, 2 August 2019. at 20h
Program: Eduardo Martín, Ernesto Lecuona, Manuel G. Tavárez, Leo Brouwer, Ñico Rojas, Sabin Drăgoi, Miroslav Tadić, Bryan Johansson
Information and ticket reservation: info@guarnerius.rs i 069/36 12 038
Puerto Rican, Cuban and Mexican guitarist, Arturo Castro Nogueras, draws on a rich cultural background that spans his diverse heritage. Born into a family of musicians, he has performed extensively across Europe and the Americas, including sold – out perfomances in 2018 at the Düsseldorf Festival, Reading Fringe Festival in the U.K., Mexico City´s National Art Museum, Iberoamerican Institute in Berlin, among others, featuring Mexican and Caribbean contemporary and classical music.
Recent appearances include concerts as a soloist with Neue Philharmonie Westfalen in Germany, Orquesta Ciudad de Palencia in Spain, AldworthPhilarmonic Orchestra in the U.K., Camerata Santiago de Querétaro and INJUVE Orchestra in Mexico; recitals in Berlin, Cologne, Mexico City, Belgrade, San Juan, Havanna, Paris; as well as interviews for international radio and television stations such as Deutsche Welle, Radio France International and the BBC.
The premiere of his work 3 / 4 in 2014, a collaboration featuring dance, music and visual arts, was part of Germany’s oldest art exhibition Die Grosse, in the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf. In the same year, he presented with Guatemalan writer Tania Hernandez a performance called La Llorona in Frankfurt am Main, since then he has collaborated actively with Puerto Rican neuroscientist Christian Bravo in a series of concert-conferences about the relationship between our brain and music, as well as motivational talks about music and art in Puerto Rico and Mexico inspiring younger generations.
Arturo has a Bachelors degree in classical guitar from the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico under the country’s foremost guitar professor Leonardo Egúrbida and a Masters degree in classical guitar and ancient music from the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf, Germany under famed guitarist, composer and professor Joaquín Clerch and pianist and harpsichordist Antony Spiri. In 2016 he finished his “Konzertexamen” under Joaquín Clerch at the Robert Schumann Conservatory with the highest distinction.
Mircea Gogoncea is a 27-year old Romanian-German classical guitarist based in Los Angeles.
He has performed in over 350 concerts on 5 continents. In 2018, these included concerts in Spain, India,Nigeria, Cuba, Germany, the UK, the USA, France, Luxembourg and Romania.
Having been awarded a total of 167 prizes, he is considered by some international media outlets the guitarist with the highest number of awards in the world.
Among the most prestigious of these are the1st prize at the 2018 Havana International Guitar Competition in Cuba, 1stprize at the Julián Arcas Guitar Competition in Almería, Spain, 1stprize at the GFA Youth Solo Competition in Los Angeles and the Audience Prize at the FranciscoTárrega Competition in Benicassim, Spain.
In April 2018, he organized and taught the first-ever guitar masterclass and workshop in Lagos, Nigeria. Fundraising for this charity project consisted in a 7-concert tour of India and one performance in Germany, where, together with his chamber music partners,he raised triple their project’s target amount.
His trip to India and Nigeria was turned into a documentary released in Germany that can be watched on YouTube (A Trip Around the World of Music). Further charity projects in Nigeria and India are planned for 2019, involving the German embassy and consulate, the Goethe Institute,and private organizations from the US, Germany and India.
He is currently a Teacher’s Assistant for classical guitar at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a doctoral student under Grammy award winner Scott Tennant.
He graduated with maximum marks and honors from the “Konzertexamen” excellence program at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorfunder Joaquín Clerch, as well as the “Advanced Diploma” program of the Royal Academy of Music in London.Previously, he had completed two master’s degrees simultaneously in Düsseldorf and London.