GuitarFest 2006

The first annual international multigenre festival Guitarfest 2006 took place in Bratislava on the 9th and 10th June 2006 and showed the colourful exhibition of excelent guitarists from Slovakia and surrounding countries. During the two days at the estrade hall of Bratislava PKO (Bratislava Park of Culture and Rest) a lot of musicians presented themselves with the variety of music styles from jazz through flamenco up to the hard rock music.

The Friday evening was given mostly to Slovak and Czech perfomers. The lively mix of guitar music was started off by Trencin musician Marián Fero with his Trio-project gift of guitar latino-funk-rock style. He was followed by Jimi Cimbala (the member of PS band and Metropolis band) with his melodic hard rock influenced by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and Pavel Marcel from Czech republic with his southern-rock band Pumpa celebrating its 25th anniversary of existence. The top star of Friday evening was Bohemian Michal Pavlíček, the legend of Czech rock scena, the founder of The Pražský výber (Prague select band) and many other projects. A day before festival Pavlíček participated gorgeous show where he was solemnly presented into The Beat Hall of Fame and he is saying that it was a big honour for him and he greatly appreciates it. Then there came to show Palo Chodelka (Liquid Boogie Roll) the Zilina native, the author of his own guitar schol, one of the most expresive figure of hardrock guitar scena. The end of the evening belonged to the performance of The Astro Song Orchestra band in acoustic tuned programe influenced by clasical music, jazz and flamenco with its leader Peter Luha, who is as well the main organizer and the author of the idea of Guitarfest.

On Saturday the festival began in the morning hours with workshops mostly occupied by acting guitarists, where a lot of young starting musicians as well as the older and more experienced ones could look into „the quisine“ of their art and be familiar with the most various ways of guitar playing and the basis of home-recording. The enjoyable enrichment of the festival was the presentation of Miloš Klas and Martin Klema - two hand producers of guitars where even laical audience could be familiar with the procedures of electric and acoustic production of guitars and they could even watch some materials, semi-products and partly finished guitars right at the place.

The second day at six p.m.the concert Marathon started running at a full speed and to correctly tuned audience was first introduced Slovak musicians – the rocker Vadim Bušovský with the Dorian Gray, temperament flamenco guitarists Morenito de Triana and Flaco de Neia, and Slovak Jimmi Hendrix – René Lacko, who graduated the atmosphere in the hall to the boiling point. Then there already came a while for international stars. As the first one with his trio came on the stage Istvan Alapi - lengendary Hungarian jazzrock guitarist, the member of legendary Hungarian rock band Edda. After him the stage of Guitarfest was given to Polish jazz musician - Adam Fulara . This young unpretentious musician in his even 28 years belongs with his both hand tapping style of playing the double neck guitar to the absolute top, what he demonstrated to Bratislava audience. With his immutable playing and renderring of jazz and clasical compositions he captured the whole audience. The finish of the festival in early morning hours belonged to younger Bratislava progresive group – Persona Grata.

The first year of the festival turned out well beyond measure according to a number of successful leaving visitors and praiseful statements of performers. As the similar festival and in such a measure did not exist in Slovakia and even in surrounding countries up to this time, it is possible with a big probability that Bratislava waited to see another big cultural event which has the tendency to live many years.
The audience and lots of well-wishers can certainly enjoy themselves for the next coming guitarfest 2007.