Mircea Gogoncea is a 27-year old Romanian-German classical guitarist based in Los Angeles.
He has performed in over 350 concerts on 5 continents. In 2018, these included concerts in Spain, India, Nigeria, Cuba, Germany, the UK, the USA, France, Luxembourg and Romania.
Having been awarded a total of 167 prizes, he is considered by some international media outlets the guitarist with the highest number of awards in the world.
Among the most prestigious of these are the 1st prize at the 2018 Havana International Guitar Competition in Cuba, 1st prize at the Julián Arcas Guitar Competition in Almería, Spain, 1st prize at the GFA Youth Solo Competition in Los Angeles and the Audience Prize at the Francisco Tárrega Competition in Benicassim, Spain.
In April 2018, he organized and taught the first-ever guitar masterclass and workshop in Lagos, Nigeria. Fundraising for this charity project consisted in a 7-concert tour of India and one performance in Germany, where, together with his chamber music partners, he raised triple their project’s target amount.
His trip to India and Nigeria was turned into a documentary released in Germany that can be watched on YouTube (A Trip Around the World of Music). Further charity projects in Nigeria and India are planned for 2019, involving the German embassy and consulate, the Goethe Institute, and private organizations from the US, Germany and India.
He is currently a Teacher’s Assistant for classical guitar at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a doctoral student under Grammy award winner Scott Tennant.
He graduated with maximum marks and honors from the “Konzertexamen” excellence program at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf under Joaquín Clerch, as well as the “Advanced Diploma” program of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Previously, he had completed two master’s degrees simultaneously in Düsseldorf and London.
