Guitarist to Perform at WFU

Afshar heads the guitar program at the University of Memphis. She was chosen as “artistic ambassador” for the U.S. Information Agency to Africa in 1995. She has given concerts throughout the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy, Africa and South America.

She won a Tennessee Arts Commission individual artist fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Recording Award. Afshar was also top prize-winner in the 1988 Guitar Foundation of America Competition, grand prize winner in the 1986 Aspen Music Festival Guitar Competition, and the winner of numerous other prestigious prizes.

In the summer of 1986, she was among the 12 international guitarists who were selected to play for AndrÈs Segovia in master classes held at the University of Southern California.

Born in Tehran, Afshar came to the United States in 1977 to attend the Boston Conservatory of Music, where she was the first guitarist to be awarded a scholarship.

Afshar’s recording of the “24 Caprichos de Goya” by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco has been hailed as an “unequivocal success” by Guitar Review. She will perform three of the 24 “caprichos” for the Wake Forest concert. She will also perform her own arrangement of “Five Persian Ballads” and works by Enrique Granados, Carlo Domeniconi, AgustÌn Barrios and Isaac AlbÈniz.

Admission to the guest recital is free. For information, call 758-5026.

Afshar’s preformance is part of a series of events during Wake Forest’s Year of Globalization and Diversity, the university’s yearlong look at the world’s development into a more global community. For more information about the year call 336-758-5788.