Miami International Guitar Festival-1st Concert Day

This was another busy day. It started in the morning with workshops over slide and sound. After those two experiences I, along with the rest of the students, had the opportunity to watch and listen as Richard and Mir Ali practiced and jammed together. They experimented with a number of different tunes and seem to have settled on combining efforts on Greensleeves, Romancsa(I have this title wrong), a medley that begins with Anji and wrapping up on Freight Train. This is subject to change since they are currently meeting here at the hotel to go over more details. They have another rehearsal scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. We attended a concert in the recital hall that RG will perform in Friday evening. It opened with Rene Gonzalez, head of the U of Miami classical guitar program, he was joined by a flutist later in the set. The show was wrapped up by a newly formed classical guitar trio, The Miami Guitar Trio. Their performance was nearly perfect. All of this provided a great experience even though I wasn't able to play much today. Because of my association with Richard I was to able attend a post concert informal get together at a local sports bar. It was interesting to listen to all of the conversations between these artists as they shared information about their careers and devotion to playing their instruments. I had very little to contribute except when the talk became more purely social. RG is wondering how the audience will react to his non-classical approach to playing. It will be quite interesting to see how everyone adjusts to having a performer break all of the rules of a classical concert. I believe tomorrow I will be spending my day doing two things, playing guitar on my own(haven't actually had much time for this) and providing an anchor for another of RG's students,Camille, who is coming into town for his concert. The concert will open with Mir Ali, a spectacular classical/flamenco style player and RG has the second set. At the end they will join forces for a few tunes. I'm going to bring this to a quick close and focus on some of my playing.