Berta Rojas Set to Perform Feb. 12th

Portland Classic Guitar (PCG) is proud to present the brilliant Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas, performing on Friday, February 12, 2016, in St. Anne’s Chapel on the campus of Marylhurst University. The music will start promptly at 8 PM. There will be a master class the following day, at 11 AM, in Marylhurst’s Wiegand Hall. 

Renowned for her flawless technique and innate musicality—she was praised as “guitarist extraordinaire” by the Washington Post, and “ambassador of the classical guitar” by Classical Guitar Magazine—Rojas is ranked among today’s top classical guitarists. She studied with Manuel Barrueco (among many others), and has been twice nominated for a Latin GRAMMY. She has performed all over the world—including memorable concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center, London’s South Bank Centre, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Dublin’s National Concert Hall (where she performed as a soloist with the Irish Radio and Television Orchestra), and the Flagley Studio 4 in Brussels (where she performed with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra). In 2011, she undertook a four-year tour with the masterful Cuban woodwind player Paquito D’Rivera, in which the all-star duo followed the travels of Agustín Barrios, celebrated composer and pioneer of the classical guitar in the Americas. They performed in twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries—concluding their journey at the national theater of the capital of El Salvador, Barrios’s final resting place.

Rojas is renowned for bringing each audience on a journey of sound, and also for embracing new works by composers of diverse genres—an adventurousness reflected in her discography. But in addition to continually enriching her own artistry, she is firmly committed to advocating for the classical guitar. In 2014, she was the Artistic Director of the three editions of the Ibero-American Guitar Festival, at the Smithsonian Museum, in Washington, D.C. She is particularly focused on promoting the music of her country, Paraguay—as well as Latin American music in general—and offering ongoing support to young, upcoming artists. Along those lines, she created the first online classical guitar competition—the Barrios World Wide Web Competition—in 2009. Additionally, she co-founded the Beatty Music Scholarship Competition for Classical Guitar—whose young winners have the opportunity to perform at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Rojas has been honored as a Fellow of the Americas by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for her artistic excellence. In a 2014 publication, the news agency EFE deemed her one of the most influential women in the Hispanic world.

 This concert is not to be missed!