Krzysztof Pełech, the Festival's Artistic Director, came up with the idea to launch Gitara+ to combine the guitar with other musical instruments in one setting. Initially, the festival was all about classical music, but the formula was later on extended with jazz and flamenco. The new name announces both the star performers who are going to arrive in Wroclaw and the festival's new initiative, namely the International Guitar Contest. The participants in the contest (two styles: classical and fingerstyle) may attain international guitar stardom one day. With a number of eminent artists in the jury, including Tommy Emmanuel, Martin Taylor and Leszek Możdżer, the prize pool in the contest is 60 thousand EUR. The auditions for Stage 2 in the contest (Stage 1 involved tape recordings) are going to begin at the end of October.
However, this year's edition of the Guitar Masters Festival begins on 2 October with a performance from the violin-guitar trio Cobario (admission is free!), the actual programme starting on 21 October at the National Forum of Music with a performance from the celebrated Anoushka Shankar, the daughter of the legendary Ravi Shankar, a sitar virtuoso whose style inspired a number of musicians, including the Beatles' guitarist George Harrison. Anoushka continues her family tradition, and as an ingenious sitar player both promotes Hindu music and likes to experiment with different styles that speak to people who are not exclusively enamoured of the Asian sounds.
Wroclaw Guitar Festival GUITAR MASTERS 2016
Live Music / Music / ECC
From 02 October 2016 to 29 October 2016 
Wroclaw: various locations depending on the programme
Spanish guitar enthusiasts are in for a number of surprises, including shows by Berta Rojas (22 October), Renaud Garcia-Fons Trio (23 October), Marco Tamayo (28 October, featuring the NFM Orchestra) czy Vicente Amigo (29 October), who is sometimes called Paco de Lucia's successor.
The early music enthusiasts are in for a performance from Falc Zenker (25 October), an ensemble offering an original take on mediaeval dances recorded in a 13th-century manuscript.
Apart from Anoushka Shankar, the festival's main hero is Tommy Emmanuel, a celebrated fingerstyle master, who may easily consider Wroclaw as one of his old haunts as he keeps returning to the festival, performs with his eminent colleagues (this year's line-up provides for a duet with Martin Taylor) and Wroclaw-based performers (Krzysztof Pełech, the Festival's Artistic Director). A native of Australia, he was a child prodigy and has now grown to become a wonderful artist that remains faithful to one guitar manufacturer (Maton) and is equally committed to performing ballads (his "Angelina" is a real tear-jerker) and upbeat music ("Classical Gas"). You just have to be there!
