Guitar studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama are designed to develop creative, versatile musicians with strong artistic identities, who have the broadest skills to thrive in today’s professional world. Our highly individualised, bespoke approach offers exceptional opportunities for performance, collaborative chamber music, arts leadership and creative entrepreneurialism. Intensive and rigorous solo studies are enhanced with individual lessons and masterclasses from visiting artists.

Departmental studies are enriched by an exceptional programme of eminent visiting artists. Guest tutors include Zoran Dukić and John Mills, and visiting artists have featured Gabriel Bianco, Pavel Steidl, Andrey Lebedev, Jørgen Skogmo and Margarita Escarpa. Julian Bream was also a longstanding supporter of RWCMD who contributed many guitar scores, a valuable collection of lute scores and treatises, a large part of his art collection, and a concert guitar for use by the department.

Our immersive chamber music programme offers plentiful scope for guitar-focused, and inter-disciplinary collaborations. On a larger chamber scale, the RWCMD Guitar Ensemble enjoys an active external concert schedule. Alongside this, we aim to develop creative educators and offer mentoring opportunities in both the educational and music industry fields.

Idiomatic guitar-focused musicianship classes include development of arranging skills and opportunities to explore performance styles from the 16th century onwards, including figured bass and ornamentation; the department has a number of ‘period’ instruments which are available on loan, these include copies of a baroque guitar, vihuela, romantic guitar, lute and theorbo.