Lily Afshar to Headline SF Bay Guitar Festival Soon

Larry Aynesmith’s nonprofit Classical Gala West group will be putting on a pair of shows in Nevada and Northern California in mid-October featuring the superb Iranian guitarist Lily Afshar. On October 14, Afshar (who was featured in this article in the Spring 2016 issue of Classical Guitar) will be playing in Reno, Nevada, at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center’s Wells Fargo Auditorium (on the UN Reno campus). The following evening she will appear as the headliner at the one-day San Francisco Bay Guitar Festival at the First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto. The SFBGF also includes a master class with Afshar, youth and adult competitions and a free afternoon concert by the fine Bay Area guitarist Matthew Fish, who is a member of the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, as well as a solo artist who has just put out a disc called From Her Source to the Sea, featuring 13 pieces by guitarist/composer Johannes Möller. Festival director Aynesmith, a fine guitarist himself, will also be performing. For ticket and other info, head the CGW site.

Here’s a video of Matthew playing the truly lovely Möller piece “Future Hope,” the concluding track from Fish’s new CD.


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By the way, in late July, CGW put on the hugely successful Sierra Nevada Guitar Festival & Competition in Reno, featuring Andrew York, DuoSF and others.