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Guitarist Lily Afshar, hailed by the Washington
Post as "remarkable, impeccable," is the winner of the 2000 Orville H.
Gibson Award for Best Female Classical Guitarist. Chosen as "Artistic
Ambassador" for the United States Information Agency to Africa, she is the
winner of the Tenth, Eleventh, and the Twelfth Annual "Premier Guitarist"
awards respectively, awarded by the Memphis Chapter of the National Academy
of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc.
Lily is the Head of the Guitar Program at the
University of Memphis where she was awarded the 2000 Eminent Faculty Award.
Other awards include the Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist
Fellowship Award in Music, the National Endowment for the Arts Recording
Award, Top Prize in the Guitar Foundation of America Competition, Grand
Prize in the Aspen Music Festival Guitar Competition, and First Prizes in
both the Music Teachers' National Association and the American String
Teachers' Association Guitar Competitions.
Lily Afshar was among the twelve international
guitarists selected to play for Maestro Andres Segovia in his master classes
held at the University of Southern California at which time Maestro Segovia
predicted that "she will be a beautiful celebrity." She then appeared in an
interview on the NBC Nightly News.
Her interest in contemporary music has led to
premiers of new works by Loris Chobanian, Arne Mellnas, Kamran Ince, Barbara
Kolb, Marilyn Ziffrin, Salvador Brotons, among others. She has given
numerous concerts in the US, England, Canada, France, Iran, Italy, Africa,
New Zealand, Australia, and South America. She has performed at the Aspen
Music Festival, Banff School of Fine Arts, the Menton Music Festival in the
South of France, and the American Academy in Rome.
Lily Afshar's articles on "Castelnuovo-Tedesco
and Goya" are published multi-lingual by Gitarre & Laute, Guitar Review, and
Il "Fronimo".
Born in Tehran, Dr. Afshar holds degrees in
Guitar Performance from the Boston Conservatory of Music, the New England
Conservatory of Music, and Florida State University. She has studied at the
Banff Centre for Fine Arts and the Aspen Music Festival. She received the
Diplomas of Merit from the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy.
Lily Afshar's recordings of
24 Capriccios de Goya by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and A Jug of
Wine and Thou are available on Summit Records (CDs #167and #236). Her
Five Popular Persian Ballads are published by Mel Bay Editions, INC.
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