Heritage Jazz organized a music master class in Classical Guitar on Thursday, 16th April, 2009 at Garden Central Studio, Ribeiro Building.The masterclass was being conducted by Ms. Louise Southwood , who is a graduate from the world famous Royal College of Music, London. As many of you will be aware, it is one of the most prestigious music colleges in England. She has attended master classes by Bream, John Williams and many others who are the who's who of Guitar internationally.

Many students presented their pieces, which they had performed for music exams, and she instructed them on how to improve the quality of their playing by various things like dynamic changes, rubato, tasto/ponticello, tone colour etc on a basic level. She worked on things like phrasing, accentuation and voicing at higher levels.

On a general note she was quite happy with the level of guitar playing in Goa and with the way students hold themselves and their instruments. She also remarked that it is quite daunting to play and get corrected in front of a whole lot of unknown people and that the students had coped with this aspect amazingly well.

Among the more advanced students who took part were Ashford who passed ATCL last December with distinction, Vernon and Tsering who passed 5th grade with distinction last December and Maria Jose who has passed 5th grade a couple of years back.

Louise was happy that there were quite a few female guitarists. She started the master class with a few warm up exercises from Pumping Nylon.

Schubert Cotta gave and introductory talk to the gathering of about 50 guitarists from all over Goa, while Roque Lazarus proposed the vote of thanks. Rui Lobo, introduced the students who participated actively.

Louise's concluding words were that one should keep practicing whether we want to be professional musicians or not, because it is an investment which one makes for ones own life; there are few things as enriching as music which one can create, enjoy and make oneself and others happy. In the present stress filled days music is truely theraupatic.