A Long Time Ago...
Theatre Concordia has been the home of a number of guitar festivals in the past. In the early nineties the members of the then Segovia Guitar Quartet organised a little festival for their students and guitar amateurs from the Twenthe region. The players were most fans and sympathizers of the Quartet, one of the rare classical ensembles with an own fan club!
I had just started studying with Ed Westerik, one of the members of the Segovia Guitar Quartet. I participated and succeeded to play Gerbe des Fleurs by Jose Ferrer in a way, both myself and the audience liked. I still remember the happy and cheerful atmosphere in the dressing rooms in the catacombs under the stage. Everyone was preparing and looking forward to their performances on stage one way or another, players were supporting each other, either by explicit encouragement or simply by lending an ear at the rehearsals.
The festival became a place to see and hear others playing and to start musical relationships in ensembles. ;-) I guess it started some love relations as well, music can be quite fruitful when getting to know each other. At that occasion Gerda Meijer and I started the Granados Duo, an ensemble which unfortunately did not live thát long (just like its name giver Granados, who died at a relatively young age when his ship was torpedoed in the English Channel in 1916). Anyway, we did some nice recitals together!
In those days, the guitar concert life was much more vivid, the Guitar Series regularly visited Enschede in the Twentse Schouwburg theatre with well known artists like Manuel Barrueco, Sharon Isbin, David Russell and the Assad brothers.
The Segovia Guitar Festival was organized three times: twice in Theatre Concordia and once in the School of Music in Hengelo, the neighbouring town of Enschede. After these, it became rather quiet in the field of large-scale guitar events.
In my mind, all memories of these sequels of the Segovia Guitar Festival had faded to more or less vague aquarelles with nice colours. It would have stayed that way, when all of a sudden an opportunity arose to paint a new impression on the canvas of my mind.