Vegas guitar festival getting rock star treatment

Friday, June 22, 2007 | 8:44 a.m.

They promised they'd bring it to Las Vegas and well, they did.

The inaugural Las Vegas Guitar Festival opened Wednesday at UNLV with master classes, seminars and performances by guitarists who play flamenco, classical and jazz.

Ten years ago pulling off an event like this would have been unimaginable, but the turnout in the past two years for concerts at the Allegro Guitar Series had organizers scratching their heads.

Guitarist Ricardo Cobo, who arranged this week's festival with Nathan Fischer, president of the International Guitar Institute, says he was shocked to see 200 people walk through the door for a performance by the Australian group Saffi re in November 2005.

That was just the beginning.

Pepe Romero's performance the next spring brought in nearly 600 concertgoers.

Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Sergio & Odair Assad, Cobo and Sharon Isbin have all performed in the series.

Additionally, Cobo says several dozen high schools, including the Las Vegas Academy of Performing Arts, have guitar programs: "It would be great for the kids to come here, rather than leave town. Many of the kids who would normally stay here in the summer were going to upstate New York or Northern California."

Cobo moved to Las Vegas in 2000 to form a guitar program and teach at UNLV. He's no longer with UNLV, but lives in Las Vegas and tours heavily, performing 80 to 100 concerts a year.

Fischer, a colleague and former student, asked him to perform at the Alexandria Guitar Festival in Alexandria, Va., and they decided it was time to have a similar festival in Las Vegas.

The Alexandria Guitar Festival celebrates its sixth year next month.

This week's event has professors from Southern California, Utah and Tucson working with local, regional and national students. Perhaps the festival will entice some of our own masters to stick around.

For a while, Cobo says, "I was thinking of moving out of Las Vegas because nothing was happening here."

Details: Guitar festival concerts are open to the public. Joe Lano and Lightwood Duo will perform at 4:30 p.m. today (free); Ricardo Cobo will perform at 8 p.m. today ($25); student recital will be at 4:30 p.m. Saturday (free); and Paco Arroyo and a flamenco dance ensemble will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday ($25). Performances will be in the Doc Rando Recital Hall in UNLV's Beam Music Center. Call 895-2787.

Art in the north With an official program under way, North Las Vegas is getting arty. The city has created a public art program with local photographer, sculptor and painter Nicholas A. Price, who will provide art, workshops and youth outreach programs in North Las Vegas for the next five years. The program is designed to connect business and government to the arts and will include an artists' registry.

Details: www.nlvart.com