Established in 2007 as a celebration of ‘the world’s most popular and accessible instrument’, the annual Adelaide Guitar Festival has become an essential fixture of Adelaide’s abundant music scene, and its artistic director, internationally renowned guitarist Slava Grigoryan, has become a household name for his popularisation of the instrument and the many styles of music that can be performed on it. 

Guitarist Slava Grigoryan and cellist Sharon Grigoryan. Photo © Simon Shiff.

COVID-19 forced the shelving of the 2020 Guitar Festival, and, while this year’s has gone ahead, it has again been affected — the much anticipated concert featuring the Melbourne Guitar Quartet and Andrew Blanch had to be cancelled at the last minute as the performers were unable to enter South Australia. In place of that concert, a variety of Adelaide-based performers were brought together to stage a concert that amounted to a mini festival, offering teasing samples of the full-length concerts the Adelaide Guitar Festival offers. This concert, suitably entitled ‘A Classical Celebration’, comprised five short performances demonstrating the increasingly wide variety of the classical guitar repertoire and the ability of Adelaide’s many fine...