The European Fingerstyle Collective Guitar Festival established by Fretmonkey and Candy Rat Records in the USA, is now brought to the UK through DMP (Daylight Music Productions) and organised by Kevin Harding (DMP) & Alicia Cotabish (Fretmonkey). The inaugural festival in Exeter (Devon) was a huge success so please check in here to see when the next festival will take place.
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A weekend of fingerstyle guitar
The festival brings players and listeners together for three days of acoustic fingerstyle guitar. Evenings belong to the concerts on the main stage. During the day the performing guitarists run masterclasses and workshops, where they talk through their own technique and arrangements with a small audience.
Between sets the Expo and the Open Mic stage run in the Atrium bar and cafe area, so anyone who has brought a guitar can get up and play. The timetable published for the 2024 festival at the TLH venue in Torquay is still on the Schedule page, and the line-up with biographies is under Guitarists.
The competitions
Alongside the concerts the festival runs two guitar competitions. The live competition takes place on the Saturday morning: each entrant plays a five minute set, the judging panel picks the finalists, and the prize winners are given a performance slot on the main stage. The online competition is for guitarists who cannot travel and is judged from submitted video links by judges from Fretmonkey, Candyrat Records and guitarists from the festival line-up.
Both competitions are on hold until the next one is announced. Prizes from previous years are listed on the Competition page, and the full rules & registration are kept there for reference.
Watch and follow
Concert footage from past festivals is collected on the Videos page, and the companies who have backed the festival with strings, capos and prizes are listed under Partners & Sponsors. For news of future dates please get in touch through the contact form.
A massive thank you to our sponsors:
We have been given a quantity of Elixir Strings for our competition and Elixir has sponsored many of our guitarists.
