Havana, April 22 (RHC) - Guitars from the world over will be played April 22/29 as the 25th International Guitar Festival and Competition get underway in the Cuban capital.

Designed on two stages –the competition and the concert program for special outstanding and prestigious such concert music events in the country, created in 1982 by composer, orchestra conductor and guitarist Leo Brouwer.

The festival is presided over by Jesús Ortega, who began his career and training with Brouwer. Ortega is one of the greatest guitar professors of our times and has taught and trained various generations of guitarists from Cuba and abroad for decades. The music gathering has been internationally promoted and organized by world known Cuban guitarist Joaquín Clerch. The festival’s program includes seven concerts at the National Theater’s Covarrubias Hall and the Minor Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi concert hall, plus workshops and master classes.

Standing out among the guest guitarists are Spain’s Pepe Romero, Brazil’s Egberto Gismonti and US’s Eliot Fisk. Romero is a virtuoso players coming from a family lineage of renowned Spanish guitarists, excelling by his versions of the repertoire by Joaquín Rodrigo and Federico Moreno Torroba.

The National Concert Music Center reports that 15 young guitarists from Spain, Poland, Romania, Costa Rica and Cuba will take part in the competition, whose first stage includes a piece of the Baroque repertoire, another piece by a Cuban composer and a virtuoso studio. Competitors who pass to the next round are set to play a grand sonata in any style, from any time or country, and works by Latin American composers. For the third round, finalists are scheduled to play Concert in D by Italian Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), who stood out by his contributions to the guitar literature in the 20th century.