Michael Chapdelaine of Albuquerque, N.M., was the best guitar performer in a field of 38 contestants. Chapdelaine has been a professor of guitar at the University of New Mexico for 12 years. He heard about the Winfield festival and competition just this last spring and mailed his entry.
The champion has been playing the guitar for about 25 years. He holds the distinction of winning top prize in four international competitions, including first prize in the Guitar Foundation of American International competition. He has studied with Italian maestro Oscar Ghiglia at the Aspen Music Festival.
Chapdelaine will be taking home the first-place trophy and a Grand Concert 914 Guitar from Taylor Guitars.
Brad Richter, Tucson, Ariz., took second place. He entered the contest last year but did not place. He is a graduate of the Chicago Music College of Roosevelt University and completed his master's degree at Royal College of Music in London. He performs throughout the United States and Europe and is the guitar instructor and orchestra director of the Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago.
The first-place winner in the autoharp competition was Dr. Mike Herr, an osteopathic family physician from Beckley, W.Va. Herr has been playing the autoharp for about 16 years. Five times previously he has entered this competition, twice placing in the top five and taking second place in 1994.
Herr recently took first place in the prestigious Mountain Laurel Autoharp Championships in Newport, Pa.
He plays Celtic music in two groups, Lost in the Woods and Mike Herr and Carlos Plumley. Herr also plays the bodhran, an Irish drum, and teaches dance, swing dance and contradance.
Herr chose a Fladmark Woodworks gospel model autoharp for his prize.
Les Gustafson-Zook of Goshen, Ind., took second in autoharp. He has entered the contest each year for the last 10 years and has three third-place finishes and three second-place finishes now.
Gustafson-Zook is a public school music teacher and part-time pastor at Faith Mennonite Church in Goshen. He also finds time to be a part-time DJ.
Tina Louise Barr of Modesto, Calif., won third in autoharp. She has entered the competition seven times and finished second in 1993 and 1996. Both Barr and her husband, John Gwinner, work for Stanislaus County in Modesto, Calif. The couple plays a broad array of music as a duo.
Larry Conger, of Paris, Texas, took first place tants in this year's National Mountain Dulcimer Championships. He won a custom McSpadden mountain dulcimer. Conger has been coming to Winfield for four years. In 1995 he finished in the top five, and in 1996 he took second place.
Conger was in full-time ministry in his church in Paris but recently resigned. He now works for the Tennessee Arts Commission and the Kentucky Arts Council by giving dulcimer programs in public schools in those states.
Steve Eulberg of Fort Collins, Colo., goes home with the second-place trophy. He has been coming to the festival since 1992 and started entering the contest in 1993. This is the first time he has placed. Eulberg is a minister who has taken a leave of absence and tends his children while his wife serves as the campus Lutheran pastor at Colorado State University.
An old-timer to the festival took third place. Mark Tindle, a salesman from Tulsa, Okla., has been coming to the festival for about 16 years. He has entered the mountain dulcimer contest seven or eight times and took first in 1986 and 1991.
| Commentary | Calendar | Comics | Sports | Past issues | Markets | About us | Weather | Obituaries | Home