Guitar Master Classes
4 one-hour individual lessons
(2 from Antigoni Goni + 1 hour visiting artist + 1 hour from teaching assistant)

Master Classes aim to prepare not only accomplished and skilled musicians but also intelligent and insightful artists.The program offers master class instruction with workshop’s director Antigoni Goni, her assistant and the guest artist. Each student will receive a total of 4 lessons in a master class setting. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in guitar Trios and Quartets, coached by Ms.Goni's assistant.

Each year the selected chamber pieces are sent to the participants one month in advance.

The program concludes with The Volterra Project Laureates concert, where a selected group of participants will perform in the historic Palazzo dei Priori in Volterra.

This year, in addition to the master classes, Antigoni Goni and Margarita Escarpa will also present a lecture/ round table on “Competitions: before, during and after!”

Business Seminars
2 two-hour lectures

Lectures and individual consultations will focus on topics such as

• Effective promotional materials-biographies, news releases, program notes, websites, ads, etc
• Media coverage, media interviews and the development of other promotional skills.
• How-tos of arts education and outreach
• Concert Programs, and “concert artist etiquette”

Participants will leave the “Volterra Project” with an understanding of how the media work and how best to position themselves for promotion of concerts, recordings, residencies and teaching with a focus on career-long strategy.

Music Physiology
Daily openings, (ca. 60’) group sessions
1 x 60’ lecture

These courses have been designed to develop an understanding of our most important artistic instrument: our own mind and body.

The subject of this year’s music physiology courses will be:

Mindfulness Meditation, Stress Reduction and Creativity

“A mind too active is no mind at all” Theodore Roethke

Musicians, like all artists, are presented with a unique set of conditions that can lead to considerable stress and anxiety. Whether it takes of shape of performance anxiety or inhibited creativity, virtually all artists live with varying degrees of stress that has the potential of sabotaging their quality of life and their creative output.

Through a variety of practices learned in this class, students will develop an awareness of options available to them when stressors present themselves. Rather than allowing these stressors to interfere with the creative process and other areas of life, participants will learn to change their relationship to the stress and its triggers. As a result, the creative process can flow more freely – at times even inspired by stress and anxiety but no longer obstructed or inhibited by them.

In this class students will learn formal meditation and yoga practices as well as numerous informal practices that can be incorporated into daily activities. Each class includes exercises, inquiry and discussion around the experience. We will also examine how these practices can relate directly to our lives as performers and creative artists.