Oscar Ghiglia

Born of an artistic family - his father and grandfather both famed painters, his mother a accomplished pianist - O.G. had to choose between a path strewn with brushes and colours and a world cut into harmony and melody. Though his early choice produced a few hundred water colours and a number of oil paintings, he soon realized music was his way. For this decision he thanks his dad, who one day made him pose for a painting showing a guitarist… For this he had to hold his father’s guitar, a companion to his artistic musings in front of his forming works. This painting was the start to a lifetime of disciplined dedication to music.

Graduated from Santa Cecilia’s Conservatory of Rome O.G. began soon is apprenticeship beside the great Master Andres Segovia, who was his major influence and inspiration during his formative years. Later O.G. “inherited” Segovia’s glorious Class in Siena’s Accademia Chigiana and spread his own teaching around the five continents in a sister vocation to his concertizing.

O.G is proud of having founded such strongholds of guitar teaching as the Guitar Department at the Aspen Music Festival (Colorado, USA) as well as in the Festival de Musique des Arcs and the “Incontri Chitarristici di Gargnano”, of having been artist in residence, or visiting professor in such centers as the Cincinnati, San Francisco Conservatories, The Juilliard, the Hartt School and the Northwestern University of Evanston, Ill. In all these centers and elsewhere, Ghiglia has been nurturing talents and forming or perfecting young artists musical outlook and interpretation. Composers as Giampaolo Bracali and, Franco Donatoni, among others have written and dedicated important works to Oscar Ghiglia. Besides touring as a solo performer O.G. has played and recorded with such names as singers Victoria de Los Angeles, Jan de Gaetani, Gerald English, John mc Collum; flutists as J.P.Rampal, Julius Baker; ensembles as the Juilliard String Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet, the Cleveland String Quartet, the Quartetto d’archi di Venezia, the Tokyo String Quartet; violinists as Giuliano Carmignola, Franco Gulli, Salvatore Accardo, Regis Pasquier; violist as B. Giuranna, P Zuckerman; cellists as K. Adam, A Roman, L.Varga; guitarists as E. Fisk, S.Fukuda, L Guerra, Antigoni Goni, Elena Papandreou.

O.G. was a founding member of the the International Classic Guitar Quartet (with, in different
turns: Benjamin Bunch,.O. Koga, Anders Miolin, S. Schmidt, Andreas v.Wangenheim), Presently, after his last CD: “Manuel Ponce’ Guitar music”, the “Stradivarius” label has issued a new CD including some of the most important lute works of J.S Bach.

Retired from the Basel Music Academy (Switzerland) where he held the professorship in guitar from 1983 till 2005, his teaching continues in the summer at the Accademia Chigiana, in Siena: in Gargnano and during the year in Athens, to a select group of pupils flocking in periodically from the four corners of Europe.

In March 2008a selected group of former students of his have celebrated Oscar Ghiglia’s 70th birthday, in a festival held in the Mannes School of music of New York, including concerts, lectures and master-classes, called “THE GHIGLIA LEGACY”. An analogous celebration took place in 2009, in Ithaca, N.Y. Besides having started the guitar program at the Aspen Music Festival Ghiglia was founder (1976) of the International Guitar Competition of Gargnano (Italy) O.G. boasts a very high number of first prize winners among his student, in competitions around the world.