Ric Ickard

Richard Alcoy, who adopted the stage name Ric *Ickard, started playing guitar at the age of eight by studying the recordings of Andres Segovia, Laurindo Almeida, Charlie Byrd and Chet Atkins. At seventeen, he began performing guitar concerts. Until he began formal studies at St. Paul College in Manila, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in music education, he was entirely self- taught. At graduation, his alma mater presented him a special award in musical performance. He won first prize in both classical and jazz guitar competitions in the 1980 Philippine Guitar Festival, and was the first guitarist to ever win both categories - all on the same day. Ric's talents blossomed as a young artist. The Philippine government granted him a scholarship to study classical guitar. Ric have performed in many five-star hotels and cruise ships. Aside from performing around the world, Ric is a regularly featured artist at the annual Chet Atkins Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Pasadena's Guitar Nights, as well as the Association of Fingerstyle Guitarists. After moving to the United States, based in Los Angeles, Ric continued to pursue his music career doing solo concerts, arranging/producing/performing with artists such as Charmaine Clamor, Florante, Tateng Katindig, Mon David and at the same time, expanding to other activities such as playing master classes to such notables as Scott Tennant and David Grimes. In 2006, Naxos took his talent into world attention by releasing a CD called "Popular Guitar Music Of The Philippines". He currently has four CDs available, all of which contain wonderful guitar renditions of popular, jazz, classical, and contemporary music. *Ickard is pronounced as: ai-kard ---------- http://www.facebook.com/ricickard http://www.youtube.com/theguitarsite My advocacy: Http://www.ricickard.weebly.com