Please be advised that the Guitar Society of Toronto's Outreach Committee will host the following recitals for amateur guitarists:

 

November 27 - High School aged and younger

January 29 - Rising Stars - Grade 8 and above

March 25 - Adult Guitarists

 

All at 3:00pm at the Briton House Retirement Centre 720 Mt Pleasant Ave Toronto. If you or one of your students are interested in performing, please contact Patrick Feely pfeely@guitarsocietyoftoronto.com

 

 

Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus Eli Kassner receives Honorary Doctorate and GFA Hall of Fame induction.

 

The Guitar Society of Toronto is proud to announce that Eli Kassner, who founded the Society in 1956, and served as Artistic Director for over 50 years, has been inducted into the Guitar Foundation of America’s Hall of Fame for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. This prestigious award is reserved for performers, composers, pedagogues, and scholars who have made monumental contributions to the development of the art and life of the classical guitar. Mr. Kassner will join such illustrious past inductees as John Duarte, Julian Bream and Pepe Romero. The award will be presented July 3rd 2011, the last evening of the GFA convention in Columbus Georgia.

 

Mr. Kassner will also be awarded an honorary doctorate from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Honorary degrees will be presented to ten exemplary Canadians at its spring convocation ceremonies in June 2011.

 

“Each of these extraordinary recipients has had a profound impact on Canada,’’ says Carleton President Roseann O’Reilly Runte.

 

Eli Kassner, renowned guitarist and teacher, will be presented with a Doctor of Music honoris causa in absentia in recognition of his “outstanding contributions to music and the arts in Canada.
Born in Vienna in 1924, Eli Kassner immigrated to Canada in 1951 after pursuing classical guitar studies in Austria, Palestine, Israel, the U.S. and Spain. Since then, he has been the central figure for the classical guitar in Toronto, founding and directing both the Guitar Society of Toronto and the guitar performance department at the University of Toronto. It has been said of Kassner that he “virtually single-handedly created serious guitar studies in Canada.” His contribution to Canadian culture extends beyond his status as this country’s pre-eminent teacher of classical guitar in the 20th century. In the 1970s, Kassner became interested in microphotography and worked as a composer and performer for the CBC television series The Lively Arts and The Nature of Things.