IGF presents a concert by the internationally acclaimed guitarist Katalin Koltai, as part of its Guitar In London and La Leona: Women and the Guitar series.

The 20-minute concert by the London Guitar Orchestra, beginning at 12:00, is free to ticketholders for the main concert with Katalin Koltai.

Katalin Koltai is a soloist and chamber musician who performs regularly with major orchestras and is a constant champion of contemporary music. She records for North/South Recordings, Naxos, Hungaroton and Genuin.

Katalin gained degrees from the Budapest Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, Royal Conservatory of Bruxelles, and the Conservatorium Maastricht, taught by József Eötvös, Antigoni Goni, Raphaella Smits, Carlo Marchione, and José María Gallardo Del Rey.  She is a PhD researcher at the International Guitar Research Centre, University of Surrey.

Since the autumn of 2018, she focuses on guitar transcription and new music for guitar, supervised by Steve Goss and Tom Armstrong. Katalin invented a new magnet capo system and a new guitar prototype. As a researcher, she published in Soundboard Scholar, Lute Society of America Quarterly, Bloomsbury Academic and gave talks at GFA Convention, 21st Century Guitar Conference Portugal, Dublin Guitar Symposium. Currently a FASS Scholarship Holder, Katalin is a former fellow of the Dutch Cultural Ministry and winner of the Hungarian Junior Prima Prize.

London Guitar Orchestra began in the late 1970’s when Penny Sewell and Don Florence, both guitar tutors at the Mary Ward Centre, created the Pendon Guitar Society as a way to provide a friendly, relaxed venue for their students to perform to a sympathetic audience of other musicians. What started as a way to strengthen students’ skills and foster their ability to perform in public quickly developed into a long-running class, based for many years at Mary Ward Centre but now running independently. The group has added many new players of different ages throughout the years. The music spans many eras and styles – from Baroque to Romantic to new music, from Vivaldi to Piazzolla to Brouwer.

Tom Kerstens is a major figure in the guitar world. He is highly regarded as a versatile performer on modern and period instruments and is an influential champion of the guitar in his roles as player, recording artist and artistic director. He was chosen in Classic FM’s list of the ‘100 best classical artists’ and ‘Five best guitarists world-wide’ whilst hailed as a ‘refreshing musical explorer’. He has commissioned 118 new works for IGF in the past 26 years. His G Plus Ensemble consists of one or two guitars, string quartet and percussion and is exclusively dedicated to new music.

‘Tom Kerstens is in a rather different league…he manages to make the guitar sound like a harp, a human voice or even a whole orchestra…his interpretations continue to amaze… Vivid, colourful guitar playing.’ BBC Radio 3