CGC 2024: Year in Review
It’s time to say goodbye to another year here at CGC. But before we move on to 2025, we want to take this opportunity to look back at 2024. So let’s celebrate all the things that have happened at CGC this year together. Please leave a comment and let us know what are your best classical guitar memories from 2024.
CGC Summer School 2024
We had another wonderful Summer School in 2024, with guest artists Gohar Vardanyan, Dr. Connie Sheu, and master luthier Gary Lee. Gary led workshops where he talked about how to care for your instrument and make adjustments at home. But more importantly, he also made one-on-one appointments to look at summer schoolers’ guitars. This was a new addition to the Summer School and we were so glad to have Gary there! Both Connie and Gohar brought amazing virtuosic concerts that left us reeling with the possibilities of what our instrument can do. Pair all of that with great camaraderie and fun music making and you have yet another very successful Summer School!
When the Summer School ended, Simon met up with several CGC Academy members in California at the Guitar Foundation of America convention. It’s always great to see our members in person and while the Summer School affords that opportunity once a year, not everyone can make it. So it was wonderful to spend a bit of time with some of our California members.
The CGC Blog
During 2024 we published almost 50 new blogs! Our goal during the year was to create new material that can serve a wider community with blogs on scales, notation symbols, how to read music, new sheet music, and more. These are a few of our favorites:
The CGC YouTube Channel
On the Classical Guitar Corner YouTube Channel we released 15 videos in 2024. Along with sample lessons from the Academy on how to read notation and Renaissance music, these included new repertoire performance videos, solo repertoire lessons, technique lessons, classical guitar string reviews, and a full-length video of duet performances from our Duets book.
New Books
Exploring the Renaissance
Our biggest project of 2024 by far was our brand new Exploring the Renaissance book and course at CGC Academy. This book features 46 pieces from the Renaissance era transcribed for classical guitar by Nicoletta Todesco and Dave Belcher. There are familiar favorites in here as well as pieces that may be new to you.
Pick up your copy of Exploring the Renaissance.
Exploring the Renaissance Course at CGC Academy
In addition to the launch of the book, we also launched a full companion course at CGC Academy. Each piece is accompanied by a performance video, a full video lesson on the music, a PDF download of the score (sometimes with alternative versions of scores available as well), and other materials like links to videos of dances and ornamentation.
The course follows the structure of the book, split into chapters: dances, songs, and instrumentals but adds grade levels to the music to make it easier to follow a clear path of progression.
The Classical Guitar Handbook
Simon also just published a brand new book, The Classical Guitar Handbook. This is a passion project of Simon’s that he has been working on for the last five years. It is also a substantially different kind of book than anything else we have offered at CGC in the past. There is absolutely no sheet music in this book at all!
Organized into four main sections—The Art of Practice, Performance, Musicianship, and Learning—it offers clear, practical guidance to help guitarists of all levels deepen their understanding and elevate their playing.
Pick up your copy today of The Classical Guitar Handbook.
New Publication: Freida
We were also really happy to partner with Australian composer Adrian Sergovich to publish his new composition for classical guitar, Freida. This is the first time we have published a new composition at CGC Publishing and we hope that in the future we can share more new music by living composers with you.
Watch a performance video by Simon and pick up your copy of Freida.
New Arrangements
But we also began releasing new sheet music arrangements on the CGC site, freely available to download. The first was our arrangement of Air on the G String by J.S. Bach. We have many more new arrangements coming in 2025, so be on the lookout for those!
Go here to check out all of our sheet music at CGC.
CGC Academy in 2024
We have spent a good deal of 2024 adding new content at CGC Academy, overall improving the curriculum and experience for our members, and filling in gaps along the way as well. These are just some of the highlights at CGC Academy this year:
New Lessons
In addition to our new Exploring the Renaissance course, we also added lots of new lessons this year:
- New Lessons from our Easy Classical Guitar book;
- New Sight Reading Lessons from our Progressive Sight Reading book;
- New Repertoire Lessons, including:
- Bagatelle No.2 by William Walton
- Kinkachoo, I Love You by Philip Houghton
- The Black Cockatoo…flying alone by Richard Charlton
Plus More…
- Simon added new weekly Fireside Chats, an opportunity to check in with the community to answer questions, offer updates on what’s happening at the site, and just chat about new things on the horizon.
- We added a new team member from New Zealand, Jane Curry. Jane has been a wonderful addition to our Coaching Calls.
- Guitoberfest 2024 was another big success and this year our special guest was Jane Curry. Jane gave a wonderful talk about navigating challenges that really struck a chord with members.
- We also said goodbye to team member Niki Todesco at the end of Guitoberfest. After being with CGC for around five years, Niki is moving on to a new opportunity working with Augustine Strings. She will still be in the classical guitar world and we wish her the absolute best!
We would love to welcome you as a new member to CGC Academy. If you’d like to learn about what it’s like to become a member so you can access all this new material as well as what’s to come in 2025, go here to get more info and join CGC Academy today.
CGC in 2025
2025 is going to be a blast at Classical Guitar Corner! We have a new course launching in January, The Cornerstone Method: Grade 2, which will also launch as a book later in the year. We will also begin work on Cornerstone: Grade 3, launch brand new arrangements of popular classical tunes, and much more. It’s going to be an exciting year.
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