The Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) competition, held in Ithaca, New York, USA on the weekend, has awarded third prize in the XXVII International Concert Artist Competition to Australian classical guitarist Aleksandr Tsiboulski. ANU first-year student Andrey Lebedev also won third prize in the V International Youth Competition in the 15-18 division.

Ukrainian born guitarist Aleksandr Tsiboulski is first prize winner in six international competitions, including the 2006 Tokyo International Guitar Competition. He recently returned to Australia after completing the Australian-American Fulbright Scholarship in the Visual and Performing Arts, based at the University of Texas at Austin.

He came in third among twelve international finalists in the U.S. competition following a weekend of advancing through the qualifying and semi-final rounds. First prize was awarded to Florian Larousse (France), and second prize to Otto Tolonen (Finland).

In a separate competition, also conducted by GFA, fellow guitarist and ANU first-year student Andrey Lebedev competed in the V International Youth Competition and was a finalist in the 15-18 division. He ranked third place overall in the competition that was won by Chinese guitarist Yunxiang Fan. Second prize went to American Matthew Lyons.

Aleks is a former student and Andrey a first-year student in guitar at the ANU School of Music under Timothy Kain, Head of the Guitar Area. The GFA is considered to be the largest and most competitive guitar contest in the world. Well done to these two young stars!