Top guitarists to compete for Crown of the Continent title

The visual arts will be taking a step back next week as Bigfork hosts guitar masters from around the world and rising performers looking to share knowledge of the art as well as have their music heard during the third annual Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop and Festival.

The festivities begin on Aug. 24 with a fundraising event for the Glacier National Park Fund at the O’Shaughnessy Theater in Whitefish.

This is the second year that Bigfork has hosted the world finals for the six-string theory competition.

The finals were originally held in Los Angeles following the workshop in Bigfork with Lee Ritenour.

“When Lee came here he fell in love with Bigfork and we got to talking and he said anyone can do something in Los Angeles, London, or Paris, and he said this is a far cooler place,” David Feffer, co-founder and chairman of the COC, said.

There were several hundred video entries from 52 countries in six music genres: rock, blues, jazz, acoustic, classical, and country. Semi-finalists include six Americans, two Canadians, and one from Israel, France, Brazil, and Bulgaria.

The semi-finals for the competition will have 12 guitarists performing at Flathead Lake Lodge on Aug. 26 from 1-4 p.m. They will play two songs each and the top six guitarists will advance to the finals where an overall winner will be selected at the end of the final competition on Aug. 29 at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts.

Judging for the semi-finals and finals will be done by Lee Ritenoeur, Chris Hillman, and Sonny Landreth.

One of the big reasons the week-long event is held is for contestants to be able to compete, study and interact with master guitarists from around the world.

The workshop has six days of study and 11 different classes with difficulties ranging from beginner to advanced blues for a total class of 79 students with ages ranging from 10 to 70 years old.

“It’s a multi-generational situation, which is very cool because someone who is 10 or 12 years old will be playing with an attorney from Los Angeles who is in his 50s,” Feffer said.

Feffer said the total number of people involved with the workshop and events is about 150, which will bring in about 4,000 people to Bigfork throughout the week for the nightly performances.

He also said $1.5 million was spent in the area during the 2010 and 2011 events.

The whole thing started in the summer of 2009 with a benefit concert for the Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center and the Montana Bliss Yoga Camp with Andrew Leonard, a classical guitarist from Massachusetts. The concert went so well that it got Leonard and Feffer talking, along with his son, William Feffer, and his brother-in-law Mark Noonan, who is an executive in international sports marketing.

“Late Sunday night, sitting around the kitchen counter and drinking bourbon, we were saying ‘what if, what if, what if,’ and ‘wouldn’t great musicians want to come here and bring their families,” Feffer said. “And over the next four months all of that stuff was put together and everyone loved the ideas, from the non-profits and to the other organizations in the valley.”

The semi-finalist competition on Aug. 26 asks audience members to donate $20.

For more information about the six string theory or the COC, go to cocgui tarfoundation.org.

“Our original goal was to establish Bigfork and Flathead Valley as the internationally recognized center for the guitar, and in three years we have accomplished that,” Feffer said. “The first year, very few people returned our calls. But now, everyone, even at the highest level, are in contact with us.”