Oscar Ghiglia (born 13 August 1938) is an Italian classical guitarist.
<… Read Full Bio ↴Oscar Ghiglia (born 13 August 1938) is an Italian classical guitarist.

Born of an artistic family - his father and grandfather were both famed painters, his mother an accomplished pianist – Oscar Ghiglia had to choose between a path strewn with brushes and colours and a world cut into harmony and melody.

Though his early choice produced a few hundred water colours and a number of oil paintings, he soon realized music was his way. For this decision he thanks his father, who one day made him pose for a painting showing a guitarist. For this he had to hold his father’s guitar, a companion to his artistic musings in front of his forming works. This painting was the start to a lifetime of disciplined dedication to music.

Oscar Ghiglia graduated from the ppSanta Cecilia Conservatory]] in Rome and soon began study with Andres Segovia, who was his major influence and inspiration during his formative years. Later Oscar Ghiglia “inherited” Segovia’s class in Siena’s Accademia Chigiana and spread his own teaching around the five continents in a sister vocation to his concertizing.

Oscar Ghiglia founded the Guitar Department at the Aspen Music Festival (Aspen, Colorado USA) as well as the Festival de Musique des Arcs and the “Incontri Chitarristici di Gargnano”, of having been artist in residence, or visiting professor in such centers as the Cincinnati and San Francisco conservatories, the Juilliard School, the Hartt School and the Northwestern University of Evanston, Illinois. In all these centers and elsewhere Ghiglia has been nurturing talents and forming or perfecting young artists' musical outlook and interpretation.

Besides touring as a solo performer, Oscar Ghiglia has played and recorded with such names as singers Victoria de Los Angeles, Jan de Gaetani, Gerald English, John McCollum; flutists as Jean-Pierre Rampal and Julius Baker; ensembles as the Juilliard String Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet, the Cleveland String Quartet, the Quartetto d’archi di Venezia and the Tokyo String Quartet; violinists as Giuliano Carmignola, Franco Gulli, Salvatore Accardo and Regis Pasquier; violists such as B. Giuranna, and P. Zuckerman; cellists as K. Adam, A. Roman and L. Varga; guitarists such as E. Fisk, S.Fukuda, Loretta Guerra, Antigoni Goni, and Elena Papandreou. Oscar Ghiglia was a founding member of the International Classic Guitar Quartet (with, in different turns: Benjamin Bunch, O. Koga, Anders Miolin, S. Schmidt, and Andreas von Wangenheim,).

Presently, after his newest CD “Manuel Ponce’ Guitar music”, a new set of recording projects is under way (note a J.S . Bach lute works CD, in the final editing process) and his teaching continues, year long, in Basel Switzerland, where he has held the professorship in guitar at the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel from 1983 till 2004.

Founder of the International Guitar Competition of Gargnano (Italy), Ghiglia boasts a very high number of first prize winners among his students, in competitions around the world.