Ana Vidović (born 8 November 1980, Karlovac, Croatia) is a Croatian virtuosa classical guitarist.

A child prodigy, she started playing guitar at the age of five, inspired by her brother Viktor. Her father was also a guitarist, but was an electric guitar player. She began performing at the age of 8 and by the age of 11 she was performing internationally, and at 13 became the youngest student to attend the prestigious Academy of Music in Zagreb where she studied with Professor Istvan Romer. Vidović’s reputation in Europe led to an invitation to study at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, U.S., with Manuel Barrueco, from where she graduated in May 2003. She has lived in the United States since, where she also works as a private tutor.

Vidović plays a Jim Redgate guitar exclusively and has said, “When I got it and began to play, I immediately knew that this was the instrument that I want to be playing for a long time.”

She has released 6 CDs published by Croatia Records, BGS, and Naxos and has released two DVDs published by Mel Bay publications.

Vidović has won an impressive number of prizes and international competitions all over the world. These include first prizes in the Albert Augustine International Competition in Bath, England, the Fernando Sor competition in Rome, Italy, and the Francisco Tárrega competition in Benicasim, Spain. Other top prizes include the Eurovision Young Musicians competition, the Mauro Giuliani competition in Italy, the Printemps de la Guitare in Belgium, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. The Gramophone remarked her “extraordinary dexterity”.

József Eötvös was born in Pécs in 1962. He graduated at the Franz Liszt College of Music in Weimar as the student of Roland Zimmer and studied the art of composing from Franz Just.

He regularly gives concerts in several countries of the world: he has played, among others, in Austria , the Czech Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Romania, Switzerland, Sweden, Slovakia, Lichtenstein, Japan and Singapore. He is invited to perform both solo concerts and orchestral concertos. He has made radio and television recordings both in his home land and abroad.

In his master courses, which sometimes concentrate on Baroque and chamber music, he carries out excellent music pedagogical activities. He is a regular jury member of international guitar competitions and the artistic leader of the International Guitar Festival in Esztergom and the Balatonfured International Guitar Festival. In his concerts, besides his own masterpieces and arrangements, the popularization of 20th century and contemporary Hungarian music plays an important role. (Among others: the works of Barna Kováts, Ferenc Farkas, Máté Hollós and Iván Madarász.) .

His arrangements are musical curiosities which are played on this instrument only by him in the whole wide world. His arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is regarded by critics as the arrangement of the century. Following this success, he produced other arrangements as well, such as Bach’s lute works (Chanterelle), Chopin’s piano pieces 1 – 2 (Professional Music Press – Poland and Gendai Guitar – Japan ), Brahms’s 21 Hungarian Dances (MelBay) and J. S. Bach The Art of Fugue.
His compositions, which are written on the guitar and other instruments as well, are also published, such as the Willow Variations (Editions Orphée, Columbus Ohio 1991), the Five Aphorisms (Trekel Verlag, Hamburg 1997) and the Featherlets (Trekel Verlag, Hamburg 2000).

He has been a teacher at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest since 2002 and he was the first in Hungary to establish a guitar faculty at a university (music academy) level.

In 2002 he was given the Artisjus Prize for the introduction and popularization of contemporary Hungarian musical pieces and he was awarded with the Franz Liszt Prize in 2004 in recognition of his work.

His college course book titled “Thoughts On J. S. Bach’s Music And The Performance Of His Lute Works” was published by the University of Pécs in 2006

Naar de website van Raphaella Smits – Klik hier

Raphaella Smits was born on the 1st of February 1957. She grew up in an artistic family. Her father René Smits is a sculptor and an amateur violinist. Her mother Carolien Van Giel was a teacher in the Waldorf kindergarden and an amateur pianist. Her brother Johan Smits was a professional violinist.

During her childhood, Raphaella enjoyed singing in a choir and participated in several productions in the Royal Flemish Opera of Antwerp. At the Waldorf school she learned to play the whole family of the recorders (the vertical flutes soprano, alto, tenor and bass).

Seeing that she enjoyed singing so much, Raphaella’s parents bought her a guitar to accompany herself. After a few months of simple chord strumming, however, twelve-year-old Raphaella became frustrated and asked her music teacher Ward de Beer (whose instrument was the violin), for help.

“Of course.”, he responded. “Next month Andrès Segovia is giving a recital in Brussels : I shall go to observe him and I’ll tell you what I have learned”. Seeing the great Spanish master of the guitar, did nothing to dampen the violinist’s guitaristic self-confidence.
“Now I know how to do it.”, he told Raphaella upon his return. “Put your left hand here, hold your right hand like this, put your left foot on this stack of books and just play!”. And play she did.

After a short while the consensus at the Smits family was that it was time to move on. “Which teacher should we contact?”, asked her parents. “It makes no difference”, said the violinist. “Even if she learns from a baker, she will inevitably become a guitarist!”. True prophecy in our own time …

The French guitarist, Gabriel Bianco, was born into a family of musicians, and received an early start on the guitar, receiving lessons with his father at age 5. A few years later, in 1997, he began his studies in Paris with Ramon de Herrera at the Conservatoire National de Région, Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris (CNR-CSP). He went through it in 2005 with an unanimously first prize and congratulations. The same year, he received the highest rank in the entrance competition to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), where he received the highest performance distinction under the teaching of Olivier Chassain. In addition, he attended master-classes with Roberto Aussel, Jose Luis Campana, Roland Dyens, Marcin Dylla, Edouardo Fernandez, Jérémy Jouve, Stephen Schmidt. Since 2005 he has also studied with French virtuoso Judicaël Perroy.

Gabriel Bianco has many various musical activities (theater piece, creation of new contemporary works…), but his main one is to perform as a soloist in recital. He played his first concert in Paris when he was 15, and in 2002-2003, he performed in a theater play in Paris during a whole season with “théâtre fragile” company. He has performed concerts regularly for the last five years, and has already appeared in over 30 music festivals across the word, in France, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, and Thaïland, and now he is invited to play in differents countries (France, Italy, Autria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Spain…).

Gabriel Bianco has already won severals prizes in internationals competitions in Europe among which : 1^st prize at the International Guitar Competition of Sernancelhe, Portugal (2005); 1^st prize at the International Guitar Competition of Ile de Ré, France (2006); 1^st prize at the International Guitar Competition of Gitarre Forum Wien, Austria (2006); 1^st prize at the International Guitar Competition of Tychy (Śląska Jesień Gitarowa), Poland (2006); 1^st prize at the International Guitar Competition “Hubert Käppel” of Koblenz , Germany (2007). He also won 1^st prize at the competition in Barbezieux, France. His most recent win at the 2008 Guitar Foundation of America Competition (GFA) has earned him the coveted 50-concert tour in the USA, Mexico, and Canada with additional concerts in China, Colombia, and Brazil.

When he was 12, Gabriel Bianco recorded for French television, “Mezzo TV”, for the program “Musiciens en herbe”, and later appeared on Romanian television (TVR Cultura). He takes part too in the creation of contemporary works (Alma Sola). He has just recorded a DVD for the Italian magazine La Guitarra and his first CD was released in 2009 on Naxos.