2020-07-10 First Vancouver Classical Guitar Festival Launched

The Vancouver Classical Guitar Festival: How It Started, Where It's Going

by Festival Founder and Director Luis Medina

While the very first edition of the festival began online in 2020, a year which we all remember very well, I think the idea started much earlier while I was a recent immigrant studying at CapU in 2012. During that time, I was fortunate to get a busking license at SkyTrain stations, where I kept hearing the same thing from strangers who stopped to listen: "we don't have enough classical guitar in this city." That thought stayed with me for many years as I joined the Vancouver Classic Guitar Society to help bring more guitar music to the public, mainly through organizing the Open Mics at the long defunct Wired Monk Cafe on 4th Ave.

Around that same time, in my own pursuit of becoming a better guitarist, teacher, and performer, I started traveling to week-long guitar festivals like the Kaslo Guitar Festival, GuitarFest West, and others. What I found there went far beyond technique. These were places where the most enthusiastic guitarists I'd ever met, whether they were in the audience, on stage, or teaching, came together simply to share their love of the instrument. I left every one of those festivals with a deeper love and understanding of the guitar than when I arrived.

After finishing my master's degree and moving back to Vancouver in 2018, I started teaching full time in various academies around the city, and I couldn't stop thinking about how badly my own students, and this city, needed something like that. So at the end of 2019, I decided to finally build it myself.

That first edition, in July 2020, was meant to be in person, but COVID-19 forced it online just months before we were set to begin. What we managed to pull off instead was a scrambled but heartfelt week of masterclasses and workshops that still drew over 20 participants from Metro Vancouver and beyond, proof that the need I'd felt busking on those SkyTrain platforms was real. From there, the festival grew steadily year after year: our first fully in-person edition in 2022, the same year we became an official joint presentation with the Vancouver Classic Guitar Society, and the same year I moved to Toronto to start my doctoral degree at the University of Toronto. The challenges of starting my degree led to an intimate edition at Deer Lake Gallery in 2023 with Jorge Caballero as our main guest artist that year.

I was very fortunate to become the Guitar Instructor at Capilano University in the Fall of 2023, and with that and the University sponsoring the festival, it led to our 2024 edition, our home ever since. Along the way we've been lucky enough to host faculty I once could only dream of studying with, including Dr. Daniel Bolshoy, Marc Teicholz, Ben Verdery, Jorge Caballero, Dr. Jeffrey McFadden, and Iliana Matos, along with incredible local faculty such as Alec Pearson, Michael Kolk, David Sossa, Louise Southwood, and more.

But what means the most to me isn't the concerts or the masterclasses, it's what's grown up around them. Many of VCGS's current Board of Directors first found their way into this community through the festival itself, or through a social event that grew out of it. That, more than anything, is the festival's quiet legacy. It didn't just bring guest artists to Vancouver for a week each summer. It built the people, the volunteers and leaders, who keep this community alive the rest of the year. 

This most recent edition, held this past August again at Capilano University, was the largest in the festival's history, both in concert attendance and in the number of participants who joined us, and it was a privilege to welcome legendary Argentine composer and guitarist Máximo Diego Pujol as our guest artist. As part of our audience, we welcomed Capilano University’s newly appointed president Dr. Jason Dewling, Vice-President and Academic Provost Dr. Vicki St. Pierre, and a special visit by the Consul General of Argentina, Ricardo Arredondo, who welcomed maestro Pujol to the stage. Ater the festival wrapped up, I received several unprompted emails from participants sharing how they enjoyed the festival, and the one thing they all had in common was how welcomed they felt, and how much a part of the community they feel now. Even maestro Pujol reached out afterwards to tell me how his week in Vancouver had been "one of the most beautiful, enriching, impactful, and important of his career," and we feel very honoured to have been a part of it.

After seven years of running this festival, now with the incredible support of my fiancée and festival Co-Director, Lucida Zhao, I can finally say I was right all those years ago on that SkyTrain platform. There is a hunger for classical guitar in this city. I can't wait to see what the future holds, not just for the festival, but for the guitar community in Vancouver.