URI Guitar and Mandolin Festival opens an eight-day program of concerts, workshops and competition

The URI Guitar and Mandolin Festival opens October 18 and runs through October 25 across the University of Rhode Island campus and nearby venues. Its 11th edition starts with an outdoor afternoon concert at the General Stanton Inn featuring URI student groups, the Atlantic Mandolin Quartet and Rhode Island blues guitarist Duke Robillard. Organizers list ten performances and about 30 guest artists across the eight-day program.

The bill reaches well beyond a single style. Classical guitarists Eliot Fisk and Jorge Caballero, gypsy-jazz player Antoine Boyer, Brazilian artist-in-residence João Luiz Rezende, mandolinist Jacob Reuven and Duo Sonidos are among the performers. Rezende’s residency includes composition and technique sessions, workshops on Brazilian music, and the October 22 premiere of a newly commissioned sonata for violin and guitar at the United Theatre in Westerly.

Education fills much of the daytime schedule. Public masterclasses, private lessons, technique and improvisation workshops, a hand-health session and luthier talks run alongside a New England instrument-makers’ expo. The guitar competition reaches its semifinals on October 24 and final on October 25, with the winners receiving concert appearances at the 2027 festival.

For players close enough to attend, the festival works as both a concert series and a concentrated week of study. The mix of performance, instrument building and open educational sessions gives students several routes into the program, while the competition and artist residencies connect this year’s edition to the next one rather than ending with a single weekend.