Young Guitarist Competition
The Judges
David Thomas has been involved in the music industry for over 20 years. An active recording producer, he has produced the last nine Christopher Parkening recordings for EMI and Sony Classical. Thomas also has produced recordings for soprano Kathleen Battle, baritone Jubilant Sykes, guitarists Virginia Luque and Liona Boyd, and the movie Last Flight Out. He has worked on recordings with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. His profession has taken him to such internationally acclaimed studios as Abbey Road in London as well as Capitol and Sony/MGM studios in Los Angeles. In the early 1990s he founded Thomas-York, Inc. and TYI/Concert Marketing, which coordinate venue marketing for many major labels, including EMI, Sony BMG Masterworks, Universal, and Warner/Atlantic. The company also includes the labels Arioso Classics and Christian Classics, in addition to a management division. Born in the Napa Valley in California, Thomas now resides in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Patrick Russ, symphonic orchestrator, works his craft with symphony orchestras around the world and on movie soundtracks. He has over 150 film score credits with Hollywood’s finest film composers, including Academy Award winners Elmer Bernstein, Maurice Jarre, and Rachel Portman, as well as James Newton Howard, Christopher Young, Nathan Wang, Cliff Eidelman, Marc Shaiman, and many others. For the concert hall, he has adapted a number of film scores from Hollywood’s Golden Age by such composers as Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, and Victor Young. His CD Previn Conducts Korngold won a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album. In 2008 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered his 90-minute orchestral adaptation of The Bride of Frankenstein live with the newly restored film. Russ’ arrangements in the classical field have aired on the Grammy Awards, Live from Lincoln Center, Live from the Met, and the Centennial Olympic Games, and have been recorded or performed by guitarist Christopher Parkening, cellists Maya Beiser and Matt Haimovitz, violinist Gil Shaham, and opera singers Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, and Placido Domingo. Russ has four music publications for 2009 with the Hal Leonard Corporation: The Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology, The Elmer Bernstein Anthology, and two volumes with Christopher Parkening: Duets and Concertos and Solo Pieces. Since his days as a guitar student of Parkening in 1979, Russ has had a longtime collaboration and friendship with the renowned guitar virtuoso. A native Californian, Russ earned a master of arts degree in music composition at U.C. Santa Barbara and a graduate degree in theology from Regent College in British Columbia. He resides in Los Angeles.
Pablo Sáinz Villegas, the gold medalist of the 2006 Parkening Competition, has emerged as one of the world’s leading classical guitarists. Appearances include his New York Philharmonic debut with four performances at Avery Fisher Hall; his debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra; performances as soloist with orchestra at the Musikverein in Vienna and the National Radio and Television Orchestra of Spain; a tour with the Israel Philharmonic; and recitals in Russia, Spain, and across the U.S.
