Teacher Spotlight: Lawrence Ferrara

Eminent teacher and performer, Lawrence Ferrara has the distinction of being the first guitarist to receive a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His teachers have included Julian Bream, George Sakellariou and Michael Lorimer. A committed educator himself, Mr. Ferrara teaches guitar at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco State University and City College of San Francsico.

He has performed major recitals in San Francisco, Toronto, Barcelona, Sydney Australia, Los Angeles and at the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. He has performed with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, the Bay Chamber Symphony, the Classical Philharmonic and the San Francisco Conservatory’s Chamber Orchestra and New Music Ensemble.

Among many awards, Mr. Ferrara was twice prize winner at the Carmel Classic Guitar Competition, served on the Music Advisory Panel to the National Endowment of the Arts and recently won the California Virtual Campus (CVC) Award, “Best Online Teaching Website” for his course on Music Appreciation.

Mr. Ferrara is the author and performer of a sequence of music books titled The Student Repertoire Series for Guitar, Vol. 1 and 2, with accompanying CDs, published by Guitar Solo of San Francisco and he has a solo CD of American Guitar Works on the VGo label.

The New York Times described his playing as “subtle, intimate and inherently musical,” and called him “an excellent musician.” The San Francisco Chronicle said, “Ferrara has an exceptional style, pure and sweet, rhythmically precise yet supple . . . . playing everything with elegant grace and a notably serious feeling for introspection.”