Adelaide International Guitar Festival

Guitars To Fill Bars, Hospitals & Homes This Winter

Music is for the people, and the Adelaide International Guitar Festival are determined to take it to them in some innovative ways as part of their August program.

In life, there are just some pairings that make sense – wine and cheese, England and rain, beer and regret, coffee and Monday. Come August, the Adelaide Guitar Festival will have another perfect pairing rolling out across Adelaide, with their new Guitars in Bars initiative to expand the event beyond the Adelaide Festival Centre to pubs, clubs and bars across South Australia.

Rock, jazz, blues, folk and more – there are no limits, just a burning desire to play. But more than being simply a massive open mic event, some of this city’s finest performers will be on show expanding upon the Festival’s ethos of showcasing the best of guitar-driven musical creation.

This brings the total tally of artists involved in the Guitar Festival to more than 300, jam packed into the four day program which runs from August 11th – 14th. That includes 18 international acts, 66 national artists and almost 200 local musicians, plus four world premiere pieces that will be performed across various shows.

In the spirit of collaboration, SALA is officially a Guitars in Bars event with guitarists playing at various venues and exhibitions, and numerous Guitars in Bars gigs will also be part of Music SA’s new live music festival Umbrella: Winter City Sounds (more on that soon).

Guitar Festival Director Slava Grigoryan said of the expansion, “this year, our Adelaide Guitar Festival stretches into new territory throughout the city, across platforms and encompasses new ideas and musical adventures. I am so excited to be bringing together world-leading artists who traverse many genres, to be exploring the nexus of health and music in our new Resonance program and to be working with Adelaide’s own world-class musicians.”

And in the spirit of truly taking music to the people, some of the headline performers for this year will also be heading into hospital wards and homes for older people, recognising the inherent human need for music and inspired by the growing understanding of music’s role in health, wellbeing, and recovery. No doubt this will bring a smile to plenty of faces across Adelaide.

Find a flip book to the full 2016 Program of the Adelaide Guitar Festival here.

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