Past Projects with our organization
2023 Emerging Artists Initiative
Ex-Aequo’s Emerging Artists Initiative featured six outstanding young classical guitarists from around the world: Cassie Martin, Aytahn Benavi, Thatcher Harrison, Bowen Zheng, Jesse Reece, and Gwenyth Aggeler.
On August 17-21, these artists premiered and recorded Sergio Assad’s new commission “Six by Six” in Austin, Texas. The recording will be released in the coming months.
Changing the Canon
The classical guitar repertoire is a uniquely diverse canon of music, however a voice that is under-represented in our music is that of Black composers from the United States. Our goal is to provide new concert level repertoire for solo classical guitar written by Black American composers. With a grant from the Augustine Foundation, we have commissioned 9 prominent composers to write solo guitar music which will then be recorded by the members of Ex-Aequo. The final product will be a recorded album as well as a large-scale video project featuring the composers to promote the new works and get them performed in concerts worldwide.
2020 Ex-Aequo International Classical Guitar Competition
The 2020 Ex-Aequo International Classical Guitar Competition will be a first of its kind online competition that highlights individual artistry and creativity. What sets apart this competition from others is that there will be no singular winner. Instead, we will choose four Grand Prize winners that split the $2000 Augustine Strings Grand Prize...ex-aequo. Those four winners will share a live-streamed concert at the end of the festival. In our eyes, one of the downsides of competitions is that artistry doesn’t fit neatly into a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th prize. Our judges will pick from a pool of 12 finalists the four most appealing artists to play the concert based on originality, musicality and personal voice. By allowing multiple Grand Prize winners, we hope that this competition will encourage players to show what makes them special as artists, rather than trying to simply play cleaner, faster, and louder than the other competitors.
Our ex-aequo winners: Aytahn Benavi, Adres Madariaga, Marcin, Kuzniar, and Misael Barraza-Diaz