The New York Guitar Festival achieved 10x growth in 2025, as part of our post-pandemic strategic plan, made possible by increased funding from the Augustine Foundation, and our new partnership with Bryant Park and Bank of America. We’re thrilled to continue this series this summer.

After celebrating its 25th anniversary last year, the New York Guitar Festival launches into its second quarter-century with an all-star lineup and an expanding range of venues.

South African guitarist Derek Gripper and the Iraqi-American oud virtuoso Rahim Al-Haj offer a kind of musical family affair, as the Arab oud is generally considered to be the ancestor of the modern guitar.

“Think global, act local,” the saying goes, and the NYGF has done just that, putting together an eclectic night of guitar music from various parts of the world on July 3.

A celebration of America’s own rich blues tradition on July 4.  Guests range from the well-known, like Louis Cato, leader of The Late Show Band, to the emerging, like the 16-year old phenom Marel Hidalgo.   Both events will be hosted by John Schaefer, host of WNYC’s New Sounds. 

Califone + Howard Fishman premiere scores to Buster Keaton silent films

Groundbreaking guitarists premiere original film scores for silent films by Buster Keaton.

Califone & Buster Keaton's Go West (1925)

Howard Fishman & Buster Keaton's The Frozen North (1922) 

The New York Guitar Festival’s 25th Anniversary begins with a typically eclectic event.  The duo ofMarc Ribot, the New York guitarist, andLeyla McCalla, the New Orleans cellist and banjo player, may seem unlikely at first.  Ribot is known for his work with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, his own avant-noise trio Ceramic Dog, and much more; McCalla writes songs that draw on the African-American string band tradition, Cajun music, and her own Haitian heritage.  But Ribot was also a student of the Haitian classical guitarist/composer Frantz Casseus, and the two musicians share a strong genre-agnostic streak.  Joining them on this first of two nights celebrating a quarter century of the NYGF isYasmin Williams.  She has extended the “tapping” technique into a whole new way of approaching the guitar, and occasionally adds tap shoes and kalimba to the sound, becoming a literal one-woman band.  And the NYGF has long presented related instruments from around the world; for this event, it’s sitarist Neel Murgai, co-director of the globally-inspired Brooklyn Raga Massive, accompanied by Jeff The Brotherhood guitarist Kunal Prakash.

Medicine Singers is the name of an ongoing collaboration betweenYonatan Gat, the wildly virtuosic Israeli-born, New York-based guitarist, and theEastern Medicine Singers, an Eastern Algonquin powwow group from Rhode Island.  Now joined by the legendaryLee Ranaldoof Sonic Youth, Medicine Singers combine ancient trance and spirituality with modern psychedelia, and make inventive use of the similarities – and differences – between the steady pulse of Indigenous American drumming and the rhythms of rock.  Other special guests will includeLaraaji,Mamady Kouyaté MaalemandHassan BenJaafar.

“Making my own list, I found you can find a hundred other great or profoundly influential guitarists without breaking a sweat.”  –Tim Brookes

The New York Guitar Festival returns to The Greene Space, WNYC’s ground floor performance venue, for an action-packed two-part series on Monday and Tuesday, June 12 and 13. For over twenty years, the NYGF has presented creative programs that feature some of the best-known guitar heroes of our time, as well as extraordinary talents that the festival’s producers, David Spelman and WNYC’s John Schaefer, have uncovered.

The New York Guitar Festival returns to The Greene Space, WNYC’s ground floor performance venue, for an action-packed two-part series on Monday and Tuesday, June 12 and 13. For over twenty years, the NYGF has presented creative programs that feature some of the best-known guitar heroes of our time, as well as extraordinary talents that the festival’s producers, David Spelman and WNYC’s John Schaefer, have uncovered.

The 2021 New York Guitar Festival (NYGF) pays tribute to the iconic classical guitarist Julian Bream with an online series of concerts beginning July 14. This year’s series “Remembering Julian Bream,” includes commissions by a group of stellar classical guitarists, lutenists and composers –including Pepe Romero, Sharon Isbin, Leo Brouwer and Laura Snowden - in honor of the Grammy Award-winning concert artist who died at his home in Wiltshire, England on August 14, 2020, at the age of 87.  In his New York Times obituary, Allan Kozinn wrote that Bream “pushed the guitar beyond its Spanish roots and expanded its range by commissioning dozens of works from major composers, and who also played a crucial role in reviving the lute as a modern concert instrument.”

The fourth and final night of the 2022 festival features the space-Americana and pastoral country stylings of guitarist, composer, and collaboratorWilliam Tyler. Also, there’s a fado-tinged set from bandleader, composer, and soloistMarta Pereira da Costa, the world’s first and only female professional player of the Portuguese Guitar (a double six-stringed, teardrop-shaped instrument traditionally played by men.) WNYC's John Schaefer hosts.

This third night features Brazilian polymathBadi Assad, who is a guitarist, yes, and…a singer, percussionist, keyboardist, and dancer. Also, on the third night, the possibly cosmic and definitely virtuosic shimmering fire of guitarist and composerVernon Reidtogether with multi-instrumentalistLaraaji, perhaps on zither. WNYC's John Schaefer hosts.

Join us for the second of four nights celebrating spectacular guitar talents features American jazz (and country, West African, classical, improvisatory) guitarist, composer, and bandleaderBill Frisell, together with bassist, guitarist, and pedal steel playerLuke Bergman. Also joining on night two is the guitarist and composerGyan Riley, whose talent also ranges and roams, spanning jazz, world music, new music, and post-minimalism. WNYC's John Schaefer hosts.

This is the first of four nights of a celebration of today’s most dazzling guitar talents and features Malian guitar virtuosoVieux Farka Touré, son of the legendary West African blues guitarist Ali Farka Touré and a leading figure on the global music scene. The series opens withGlenn Jones, an inventive, and evocative fingerpicking guitar player of the “American primitive” style. WNYC'S John Schaefer hosts.

AN ON-LINE PERFORMANCE SERIES EXPLORING THE MUSIC OF BLIND BLUES MUSICIAN, REV. GARY DAVIS. FEATURING: WARREN HAYNES, LARKIN POE, BILL FRISELL, FANTASTIC NEGRITO, ROSANNE CASH, AMYTHYST KIAH, JORMA KAUKONEN, DOM FLEMONS, LARRY CAMPBELL & TERESA WILLIAMS

For the New York Guitar Festival’s 20th Anniversary, the Festival and WNYC’s New Sounds combine forces once again, this time for a celebration of the music ofMemphis Minnie.

The 2019 edition of the New York Guitar Festival celebrates 20 years of live concerts, panels, and workshops that span the huge range of the guitar.  And it celebrates one of the instrument’s pivotal but overlooked figures:Memphis Minnie.  “Memphis Minnie was an incredible force during one of the most trying times for a black woman to be a performer in popular music in America,” says Amythyst Kiah, the singer/songwriter/guitarist who will be part of the tribute concert.  Minnie began her career in 1929, recording the song “When The Levee Breaks” with her husband Joe McCoy, known as Kansas Joe.  That song would go on to great fame when Led Zeppelin recorded it in 1971.  She was an early exponent of the Delta blues style – an urgent, passionate guitarist.  But she was also a formative influence on the electric blues sound associated with Chicago, and her career in the 1930s and 1940s – both solo and with her later husband, Lil Son Joe – produced hit songs like“Bumble Bee”and“Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” which have also gone on to long and productive musical lives.

For this concert presented by the New York Guitar Festival and WNYC’s New Sounds, Fabi Reyna acts as guest curator.  Reyna is not only a fearsome guitarist herself, she is also the founder/editor of She Shreds, “the world’s only print publication dedicated to women guitarists and bassists.”  The magazine’s stated goal “is to transcend boundaries like gender and genre—supporting radicalism, respect and revolution.” For this event, we’ll hear Fabi’s own group Savila, a kind of Latina power trio built on traditional cumbia and chicha rhythms.  Sterling Rhyne will present her ethereal guitar/vocal excursions into a post-folk, soul-inspired landscape. And Shana Cleveland takes the “American Primitive” tradition of fingerstyle guitar – a tradition associated almost exclusively with men, like the legendary John Fahey – and extends it into the 21st century.