La Jolla Guitar Festival Honors Patriarch Romero

Before he died last year, legendary guitar patriarch Celedonio Romero hoped to gather guitar makers, teachers and performers from around the world in a special festival in his longtime home of La Jolla. This week that vision becomes reality, as the itinerant Guitar Foundation of America International Convention and Competition comes to La Jolla for its 15th annual gathering, with an agenda honoring the late guitarist.

The theme may be memorial but the spirit is definitely celebratory. The week’s public activities include two to three recitals daily, workshops, lectures and the classical guitar organization’s annual competition.

On the convention’s opening night, Monday, family and friends of the extended Romero clan helped the assembled guitarists and fans pack Sherwood Auditorium of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art for a nostalgic program by Celedonio’s sons Celin and Pepe, and his grandsons Celino and Lito.

The Romeros played five pieces from the family’s familiar Spanish repertory, and played them with typical zest and perhaps too carefree intonation. Best was Federico Moreno Torroba’s vivid “Estampas”; worst was the hoary, fuzzy arrangement of Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance.” The interplay of convivial, occasionally competing personalities has always been the wellspring of Romero interpretations, and that shows no sign of fading.

In solo and duo spots, Celino and Lito displayed strong technique and quickly maturing artistry. A finger injury confined Celin to ensemble work, with Pepe supplying two groups of solos with his usual fluent authority and command of insinuating color and articulation.

If the evening was a retrospective of Iberian greatest hits, the afternoon recitals Monday suggested something of the international range and cutting-edge inclinations of GFA. Scott Tennant, a member of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and the silver medalist at the 1984 GFA competition in Toronto, paid tribute to the Romero tradition with works by Moreno Torroba and Joaquin Rodrigo, two composers much associated with the famous family quartet.

After Tennant came Russian composer-guitarist Nikita Koshkin with a set of his own music. Koshkin does not hesitate to play with melody in its more conventional guises--usually either ironically goosed or morbidly haunted--but experiments with timbre and rhythm, in descriptive works such as “Rain” and “Piece With Clocks,” seemed most characteristic Monday. He closed with his highly influential suite “The Prince’s Toys.”

These recitals were held in the welcoming acoustic of St. James-by-the-Sea Church. Remaining convention highlights include the competition finals Saturday morning at St. James-by-the-Sea.

BE THERE

Guitar Foundation of America International Convention and Competition, through Saturday, Sherwood Auditorium, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, 700 Prospect St.; St. James-by-the-Sea, 743 Prospect St., (619) 459-3459.