GuitarFest 2025 Artists
Performers and clinicians include: Dr. Adam Kossler and John Kossler (Kossler Duo) • Dr. Michael McCallie and Alejandro Olson (Chattanooga Guitar) • Dr. Kami Rowan • Kenneth Kam • Dr. Douglas James • Anderson Page.
More bios and details to be added soon!
Dr. Adam Kossler, Artistic Director
Adam Kossler is a top prizewinner in a number of national and international guitar competitions including the Boston Guitarfest, Columbus Guitar Symposium, East Carolina Guitar Competition, MANC Guitar Competition, Texas International Guitar Competition, and the Music Teacher National Association Competition. Kossler’s international performance career has taken him throughout the US, Canada, Central America and Asia. He has been a featured artist with numerous concert series including the John E. Marlow Guitar Series (Bethesda, MD), Isle Newell Concert Series (Appalachicola, FL), and the Seven Hills Guitar Series (Tallahassee, FL) among many others. In 2015, his Marlow Guitar Series performance was aired in its entirety on Classical WETA’s weekly program, “Front Row Washington”. Recently he performed at Carnegie Hall, premiering new works by Chilean composer Javier Farias.
In addition to his performance career, Kossler is also in demand as a teacher and clinician. Recent engagements include The Denver Guitar Summit (Denver, CO), Festival Internacional Suzuki (Guatemala City, Guatemala), University of Alaska Guitar Festival (Anchorage, AK) Rantucci Guitar Festival (Buffalo, NY), and in 2015 Kossler was the featured Artist in Residence for Utah Classical Guitar (Salt Lake City, UT).
In 2014, Kossler released his first solo recording, Guitar Recital. The album was received with enthusiasm by critics and audiences and was featured Tom Cole’s show, “The G String,” on WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington D.C. In 2015 Kossler released his second solo record. Ekloge, an album of 20th-century music, includes works by Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel Maria Ponce and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, as well as his own new transcriptions of music by Jean Sibelius.
Adam Kossler began his musical studies with his father William Kossler. He went on to earn his BM degree at East Carolina University with Dr. Elliot Frank, his MM degree at Appalachian State University as a teaching assistant to Dr. Douglas James, and completed a DMA in Guitar Performance at Florida State University where he served as a teaching assistant to Bruce Holzman. Dr. Kossler currently directs the guitar program at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
Anderson Page
Jazz guitarist Anderson Page maintains an active schedule in the Southeast with a variety of jazz and rock ensembles. He has performed internationally at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Japan’s Muroran Jazz Cruise, and for jazz workshops in Friburg, Germany. Page worked in the cruise ship industry in the South Pacific, Mediterranean and Caribbean seas and also traveled with a nationally touring theatrical production. In recent years he has performed at Asheville’s Django Reinhardt Celebration and the Dizzy Gillespie Jazzfest in South Carolina, and has been a featured composer at the Jazz Composers Forum based in Asheville, NC. Page has performed private engagements for former President Bill Clinton and poet Maya Angelou, and has performed with jazz artists such as Phil Woods, Jamey Aebersold, Tony Monaco, Matt Wilson, and many others. He has worked as a session player on numerous recordings, and has a released a recording of gypsy waltzes entitled “Souvenir de Django” with the trio Musette Guitars. Page has a Masters degree in Jazz Studies from the University of Tennessee and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from University of North Carolina-Wilmington. He has studied privately with renowned jazz educators Jerry Coker and Donald Brown and with guitarists Mark Boling, Bob Russell, and Robert Nathanson. Anderson Page currently is on the music faculty at Appalachian State University where, in addition to Applied Jazz Guitar, he also teaches History of Rock Music, Jazz in American Society, and Jazz/Pop Theory.
Douglas James
Douglas James has performed as a classical guitarist throughout the United States and Europe for over 40 years. He has been a featured recitalist for such notable venues as the Guitar Foundation of America annual convention, Guitar-Festival Iserlohn, Stetson International Guitar Workshop, Oberlin Conservatory, New York's Carnegie and Merkin Halls, and many more. He has won the top prize in the Arturo Toscanini Solo Guitar Competition (Italy), and twice has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Fellowship. James often features authentic 19th century instruments in his performances of the Classical and Romantic literature, and is one half of the Rucco-James Duo, featuring 19th c. period guitars with the Italian guitarist Pasquale Rucco.
James has recorded three critically acclaimed CD's for the Cala Vista label. The first, Italian Romantic Music of the Early 19th century, featuring 19th century solo guitar music on period guitars, was followed by two in duo with Pasquale Rucco, Early Romantic Music for Two Guitars, and A Night at the Opera. Gitarr och Luta (Sweden) notes that "Douglas James' playing on the record is for my taste totally splendid. His enthusiasm to explore the early guitar repertoire is obvious, and he has an ability to use the old instruments to their full capacity, with all of their timbral possibilities. He plays intensely and sensitively with flow, ease and elegance." Classical Guitar (England) states, "Douglas James clearly has a great deal of sympathy for this repertoire and a carefully worked out approach to its interpretation ... everything is animated by concern for the life of the music on its own terms and in its own time. This is a welcome addition to the choice of 19th century repertoire played on genuine instruments of the time."
In addition to his work as a classical guitarist, James has in recent years expanded his musical horizons to return to his earliest roots playing electric guitar in various contemporary styles, and to playing Baroque music on the theorbo. (For him there’s a strong connection in the improvisational playing of contemporary electric guitar, and the improvisation involved in realizing continuo in Baroque music.) James plays theorbo with Harmonia Baroque and Corde Cantanti, and is the electric guitarist for the Junaluska Gospel Choir, the Harrows, and the Extraordinaires.
Douglas James holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Arizona where he studied with Thomas Patterson. Dr. James is a past member of the Advisory Board and Board of Trustees of the Guitar Foundation of America. He was Professor of Guitar at the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University for 27 years before retiring in 2022.
You can view more about Douglas James at his professional web site www.douglasjamesguitar.com