LECTURES

Presented by the festival artists, MIGF lectures provide students and all community members opportunities to expand their understanding of a variety of musical subjects. Each lecture is free and open to public.

In the first lecture of the festival, David Dolata will present Tablature – Alternate Music Notations 1300-1750. Did you know that there are over forty types of tablatures and counting? Or that tablature was invented to provide solo instrumentalists with a score that showed all the individual voices together simultaneously? Or that for several hundred years, tablature was the primary notation for solo instrumental music? Or that, like today’s professional lutenists who read both tablature and mensural notation fluently, composers such as Palestrina, Monteverdi, Buxtehude, and Bach did as well? Or that tablature was not created as an alternate notation for amateur musicians who were unable to read mensural notation? In this presentation, FIU Professor of Musicology David Dolata celebrates the publication of Tablature: Europe 1300-1750, eds. John Griffiths, David Dolata, and Philippe Vendrix (Turnhout: Brepols, 2026) with an introduction to new ways of thinking about tablature. Over the course of 1,000+ pages, 904 full-color facsimiles and illustrations, and 435 essays & transcriptions by 30 leading player/scholars, this book offers an encyclopedic panorama of the variety of tablatures that formed part of the Western musical mainstream until c.1750. In addition to co-editing the book, David Dolata also wrote or co-wrote 103 of the essays and produced 54 of the transcriptions. If you are interested in the book, see here for more details.

In his lecture Brazilian rhythms, guitarist-composer João Luiz will explore how the classical guitar repertoire incorporates Brazilian rhythms. He will also talk about right hand technique and how it relates to styles such as baião, choro, valsa, samba, and bossa-nova.

19th century music specialist and guitarist Marco Battaglia will present a lecture on Phrasing and Ornamentation in the Classic and Romantic Periods in the late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Early music specialist Liamna Pestana and Luciana Kube present an interactive lecture/workshop Strings & Song: Exploring the Voice with Lutes and Guitars exploring the rich relationship between the human voice and the plucked-string instruments of the lute and guitar family. From the intimate sound world of the renaissance lute, guitar and vihuela, participants will discover how these instruments have supported, accompanied, conversed with, and responded to the singing voice across different musical traditions. Through live demonstrations, guided listening, historical context, and hands-on musical activities, the workshop will explore different approaches to accompanying the voice, including chordal textures, contrapuntal writing, rhythmic accompaniment, ornamentation, improvisation, and the expressive possibilities created when voice and plucked strings perform together.

Participants will also experience the distinctive colors and characteristics of instruments from the lute and guitar family and consider how the qualities of each instrument influence vocal interpretation, phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and text expression. Rather than treating the singer and instrumentalist as separate performers, Strings & Song invites participants to explore them as musical partners—listening, breathing, phrasing, and shaping the text together.

Alieksey Vianna presents a lecture on Form and Texture in Self-Accompanied Guitar Improvisation. How can a guitarist improvise alone while sustaining complete and convincing musical textures? This lecture presents the central ideas and practical outcomes of my doctoral research into self- accompanied guitar improvisation. Situated between the traditions of classical guitar and jazz improvisation, the research investigates how a single improviser can integrate melody, bass, chords, countermelodies, and rhythmic gestures without the aid of overdubbing or looping devices.

Download the 2027 MIGF Schedule of Events

Download the  2026 MIGF Program Book

2027 MIGF Festival Pass is available to attend all festival events at a single reduced price:

$100 general, $70 senior/FIU faculty, staff, & alumni, $30 student
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