GiCoN

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Early planning

Local coordination
As we can plan only a few (for the moment 3) concerts a year, we have limited possibilities to invite everybody, even the greatest musicians we know... Besides this, we have to collaborate with the Nijmegen theatres, concert venues and cultural organisations. After all, all parties involved have a common interest to establish an optimum annual schedule, a cultural agenda showing a well-coordinated spread of the better concert dates, disponibility of locations etc.

The GiCoN part of the preparation for the annual program is done in February; in March we have to talk it over with the Nijmegen Concert Hall and other cultural organisations, thus planning more than one year ahead.

Adjusting or fine-tuning tour dates is probably discussed with you during the second half of March or the beginning of April. For several reasons - some of which having to do with our personal working circumstances - GiCoN considers Saturday evening the ideal moment for a concert performance.

Publicity
For reasons of optimum publicity GiCoN concerts will have to be mentioned from now on in all annual calendars (printed or digital) concerning cultural life in Nijmegen and even at national level. These brochures etc. contain programs with rather detailed descriptions of scheduled performances, to accommodate the ever-growing group of Dutch people subscribing to packages for the entire season. This is why we need to have a description of both contents and concept of your concert around the end of February / beginning of March, although the concert itself may take place even 15 months later.

Musicians we know and admire
As a rule GiCoN takes initiative to contact musicians directly and often long before a plan can be carried out. We may even contact you without having a concrete plan, but to discuss together the possibility of a future project. This is because we know you personally. Needless to say that we greatly enjoyed both your presence on stage as your musicality in a live performance we witnessed at some concert, festival, competition, masterclass.

Let us know your plans
Our cultural season starts mid-September and closes at the end of May. For our annual planning January / Februari seem to be the proper period to contact us with information about your ideas and tour schedule during the next season. Just a short message will do: probably we already made plans with musicians we would like to invite, but there is always a chance we have to switch to another plan to solve a calendar problem with the Concert Hall. Such a message will probably contain some indications about practical issues like dates or time frames and also artistic ideas or plans, even in an embryonic stage.

Choice of musicians

Although anybody is free to contact us, there is no such thing as an “application procedure” We have to select musicians according to several points of view. First of all, there are practical issues like calendar possibilities, transport costs etc. A Guitar Quartet from Rio de Janeiro would be far too expensive to get here from over the Atlantic, unless they can cross the ocean at the cost of some other foreign concert organisation they already have a deal with.

Providing a musical top-experience, of course, is a leading principle. It is our GiCoN policy to exclusively invite world-class level musicians. We wish to position the classical guitar and its repertoire at the same level of interest as a Marta Argerich playing the 7th Prokofiev Sonata, a Bernard Haitink conducting Mahler’s Ninth, a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing the Winterreise… In 2011 we invited great personalities like Gaëlle Solal, Rafael Aguirre, Giampaolo Bandini (with the incredible bandoneonist Cesare Chiacchiaretta).They are the musicians you should compare yourself with. In spite of their tremendous CV’s, concert experiences in famous halls, live broadcasts on TV etc. they were flexible enough to help our starting organisation, for which we are very grateful. We share a long term vision and a win-win perspective.

As for the chosen repertoire we all should be aware of different product-market combinations appealing to a mixed audience consisting of guitar aficionados, connoisseurs of chamber music discovering the guitar, young persons with little musical background etc. We would like to develop our audience and to present the guitar at its best.

Leading principles:

As GiCoN is a not-for-profit organisation with limited financial ressources, we have at least to break-even for every concert. We also should have in future at least one concert per year in the big Concert Hall that generates some extra funds for special projects.

As GiCoN wishes to show the multi-faceted nature and versatility of the classical guitar, we strive for variety in all aspects of our concerts. In addition to this we have to take into account new trends in concert production, like extending the performance on stage possibilities and combining a concert with side activities. The audience seem to appreciate a special evening for more aspects than only the guitar. (Nontheless, the guitar should always remain in the center of attention) For our annual program we consider the following aspects:

1. Diversity in number of musicians and choice of instruments, but at least 1 solo guitar recital per year. The guitar as a self-sufficient instrument should invariably stay in a prominent role.

-Guitar solo -Multi-guitar (Guitar duo / Guitar trio / Guitar quartet) -Guitar in duo/trio with other instrument(s) -Vocal music with guitar

2. Variety in music styles (Baroque, Experimental etc.) 3. Variety in program concepts (Thematic, musical forms, chronological etc.) 4. Variety in on-stage performance concept (e.g. Platero y yo: story telling and guitar) 5. 2 Concerts in the chamber music hall and 1 in the big hall (our ideal for the future)