UK Guitar Series Presents Debut of Andrew Wilder, Xavier Jara Duo
LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 4, 2018) — Classical guitarists Andrew Wilder and Xavier Jara will make their debut performance as a duo right here in Kentucky as part of University of Kentucky's Guitar Series. The free public concert will begin 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 5, at Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church.
Andrew Wilder is a master’s student in guitar performance at the University of Kentucky School of Music. He holds two artist diplomas in guitar performance, one from the Istituto Musicale Pareggiato ella Valle D’Aosta in Aosta, Italy, and one from the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland; at both conservatories he studied with Lorenzo Micheli. Wilder received his bachelor's degree in guitar performance at Columbus State University under the instruction of Andrew Zohn.
Wilder is the winner of the 2017 University of Louisville International Guitar Competition, and will travel to Guanajuato, Mexico, this summer as artist-in-residence at the University of Guanajuato, where he will perform the complete lute works of Johann Sebastian Bach on guitar.
Xavier Jara is currently pursuing his Master of Music at San Francisco Conservatory, where he studies with Judicaël Perroy. He is continuing his work with Perroy after studying with him in Paris, France, for six years. He received his bachelor’s degree at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris under the instruction of Olivier Chassain and Éric Bellocq.
Jara is the First Prize winner of the 2016 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) International Concert Artist Competition, as well as the GFA’s prestigious Rose Augustine Grand Prize. During Jara’s 2017-2018 GFA concert tour, he performed more than 60 concerts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and Panama. He also performed a concert at Carnegie Hall in April 2018.
Wilder and Jara met in 2009 at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis, where Jara was a student of Alan Johnston. The pair reconnected at the University of Louisville International Guitar Competition in 2017, and when Jara came to Lexington on tour later that year, they began to talk about forming a duo.
“For a long time, I’ve admired Xavier’s musicianship, and it’s been really special working with him,” Wilder said. “I’m really looking forward to our first concert as a duo.”
The event's program will feature works by Bach, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Steve Reich and Dušan Bogdanović.
The School of Music at the UK College of Fine Arts, currently celebrating its 100th anniversary, has garnered a national reputation for high-caliber education in opera, choral and instrumental music performance, as well as music education, music therapy, composition, and theory and music history.
