Known by her musically expressive and charismatic performances, Puerto Rican guitarist, composer, and teacher Yovianna García Alvarado is a unique, young promise in the classical guitar scene.

After participating in her grandmother’s choir as a child and attending the numerous performances her aunt and mother presented as music teachers, Yovianna began violin studies at the age of eight, at the Escuela Libre de Música Juan Morel Campos, until she discovered the guitar at age eleven through her mother. After hearing a recording of Segovia, she fell in love with the classical guitar. She enrolled in the Instituto de Música Juan Morel Campos at age fourteen to study classical guitar with Santos Torres Toro and Héctor Hernández Maldonado. Later, she earned a Bachelor of Music Degree in classical guitar performance at the Music Conservatory of Puerto Rico under the tutelage of Leonardo Egúrbida. Then, she went on to earn a Master of Music degree in classical guitar performance at the Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford) under the guidance of Richard Provost. She has also taken courses and master classes with renowned artists such as Nicholas Goluses, Roland Dyens, Manuel Barrueco, Eduardo Fernández, Benjamin Verdery, Berta Rojas, Oscar Ghiglia, Angel Romero, William Kanengeiser, Nigel North, Jason Vieaux, David Starobin, and Jeremy Jouve.

Yovianna has performed for the Miami International Guitar Festival, Connecticut Guitar Society; New Music Hartford contemporary music series; Primer Festival de Guitarra Clásica in Ponce, Puerto Rico; was a soloist with the Sgt. Katherine E. Brunelle Memorial Orchestra in New Hampshire, and the Nutmeg Symphony in Connecticut; has toured in United States, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic; and has recorded her first solo CD ‘Portrait’. She regularly performs in her native Puerto Rico and in the New England area, and exercises her diverse musical skills -including Puerto Rican folkloric music- on a weekly basis as a music minister at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, Connecticut, where she resides.

Yovianna’s awards include Second Place at the National Classical Guitar Competition in Puerto Rico, the Guitar Department Award from the Conservatory of Puerto Rico, the Instrumental Performance Excellence Award from the Instituto de Música Juan Morel Campos, and the Thomas Armstrong Toro Fine Arts Excellence Award.

Inspired by her family’s teaching -and performing- tradition in Puerto Rico, trained by guitar pedagogy pioneer Richard Provost, and using the Suzuki method; Yovianna currently teaches at The Hartt School Community Division of the University of Hartford; the Music and Arts Center in West Hartford, Connecticut; the Community School of the Arts at the University of Connecticut; and at her own private guitar studio. She also teaches master classes and technique workshops for festivals, educative institutions, and guitar societies, including most recently Trinity College, the Connecticut Guitar Society, the Wheeler School, the Moultonborough Academy, and the Puerto Rico Music Conservatory.

Yovianna’s composing and event-organizing skills have also brought her many successes. In addition to premiering and touring her piece “Nítido” in Puerto Rico with the Alturas Duo, her other compositions have been featured in festivals including the Primer Festival de Guitarra Clásica in Ponce, Puerto Rico which Yovianna herself organized with a team from the Fundación Chiry Vassallo. She is also the Artistic Director of a concert series at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, Connecticut.

Recently, she started a guitar/percussion/vocal duo with Taiwanese percussionist Sayun Chang called Kaleidos. Like a kaleidoscope portrays a beautiful and surprising range of forms and colors -kalos (beautiful) + eidos (form)-, this duo encompasses music from diverse cultures and aesthetics that range from “European Art music” to Taiwanese aboriginal music. It is an exciting new project that is not to be missed, altogether with other solo, chamber, and soloist upcoming projects in Yovianna’s musical life.