Classical guitar convergence

Look toward the Long Center for the Performing Arts beginning Tuesday and you're likely to see hordes of guitar-carrying folks.

Just don't expect to find any volume and tone control knobs or pickups on any of those guitars.

That's because these guitar-welding masses - nearly, 1,000 of them - are here in Austin and at the Long Center for the Guitar Foundation of America's annual convention and competition, the largest gathering of the classical guitar industry in the world.

Hosted this year by the Austin Classical Guitar Society - the nation's largest classical guitar organization - the nearly weeklong event attracts most major performers on the scene as well as producers, industry professionals, luthiers (guitar makers), composers and just about anybody else whose business is the classical guitar.

And then there are the more than 100 emerging professionals who have entered this year's competition. The prize is quite literally career-making: a solo CD recorded and released on the Naxos label; a yearlong tour of approximately 50 concerts throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America and China; a Carnegie Hall debut; $7,500 in cash; and a DVD recording.

The six-day festival culminates in a public concert that determines a winner. (Preliminary and semifinal performances are open to convention registrants only.)

Matthew Hinsley, executive director of the Austin Classical Guitar Society, began pitching the idea of bringing the foundation's convention and competition to Austin more than five years ago. 'The opening of the Long Center two years ago tipped the scales for us,' Hinsley says. 'It's really important to have one central venue where everything can take place. And we'll be using every stage and corner of the Long Center.' Large public concerts will be in Dell Hall, competition performances will occupy the smaller Rollins Studio Theater and the Kodosky Lounge will play host to a vendor fair.

It was also important to Hinsley that if he was going to bring the foundation and its crowd to Austin, he was going to do it Austin-style and make the festival as accessible and as open and as generally appealing as possible.

And that means that the ever-popular children's performers the Biscuit Brothers will be joined by the Grammy-winning LA Guitar Quartet for a children's concert. And so that no guitarists take themselves too seriously, Hinsley's invited Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to set up its Rolling Roadshow screen on the Long Center Terrace for a free screening of 'Crossroads,' a 1986 film starring Ralph Macchio. Macchio plays a young classical guitarist smitten with the blues who sets out to find the root of famed bluesman Robert Johnson's supposedly magical talent. And while the movie screens, comedy troupe Master Pancake will performs its signature live spoofing.

LA Guitar Quartet member William Kanengiser, who is also a Guitar Foundation of America board member, is down for that. And not just because he was Macchio's classical guitar coach for 'Crossroads' and also the actual guitarist on the movie's soundtrack.

'This particular festival is a great chance for the often parochial classical guitar world to reach out to a wider public and get new fans energized about the music,' says Kanengiser. 'And Austin is the perfect city to do this in. It's kind of a no-brainer for us to bring (a classical guitar convention) to a city like Austin.'

Kanengiser calls the guitar 'the ultimate universal instrument,' a musical calling card for any audience.

'A version of the instrument exists in just about every world culture,' he says. 'And it's the ultimate pop instrument, beginning with its roots in the Spanish Renaissance and in flamenco, which was the popular music of the time. Originally it was really a folk music instrument, and yet concurrent with its folk status (over the centuries) it has also had this serious art music side.

'In a way, the allure of the guitar is that it is both things - a pop instrument and a serious classical instrument - and if you ignore either side of it you miss out on its potential.'

Rock on.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

'Austin Goes Classical'

Tuesday

8 p.m. - Pepe Romero. From the so-called 'first family of classical guitar' of southern Spain, the one-time teen prodigy is now arguably the senior ambassador for the instrument. Romero will play an all-Spanish program. (Concert will be live broadcast by KMFA 89.5 FM.)