The fifth annual Bermuda Guitar Festival will take place this weekend.The event will feature Adam Brown, Adam Rafferty, Stephen Crawford and violinists David France and Louise Southwood, Joy T Barnum and Mike McPhee.The concert is an annual fundraiser for the Bermuda School of Music, and helps offset students’ tuition costs.The event started yesterday and runs until Sunday place at St Andrews Church, Church Street, Hamilton.Yesterday’s event featured Mr Crawford and Ms Southwood. Today international act Adam Brown takes to the stage, and tomorrow Adam Rafferty will perform.The student gala concert takes place on Sunday.It will be Ms Southwood and Mr France’s last concert with the Bermuda School of Music both are leaving the Island.“Our repertoire includes a premiere performance piece written for us by Douglas Lara,” Ms Southwood said.“The guitar festival has been the highlight of my year. It is just an amazing opportunity for the students and the public to hear some of the best guitarists in the world, because it is kind of a smaller event than the rest of the world, so you kind of get to mix with the artists.”Mr Crawford was last night expected to perform mainly Spanish classical music, along with pieces from a South American composer and English composer John Dowling.“[Adam Brown] is a young up-and-coming guitarist, who studied at Julliard,” said Mr Crawford.“He is based in the UK, but his parents are American. He studied with Carlos Bonell, who was also Louise’s teacher, and studied at the University of Southern California and he is touring all the time.“So he has a programme that has been prepared by George Shearing. George wrote a concerto that was written for guitar, it is a cool blues jazz concerto with elements of Spanish.”Ms Barnum and Mr McPhee will open for Mr Rafferty.He was born and raised in Harlem, New York and began playing blues guitar at age six. He was playing in a rock band by the age of 12 and a professional guitarist at 19.Since then he has performed in a number of venues from the New York subway to Europe’s most upscale concert halls. He has played with world-class musicians, including the Dizzy Gillespie Band, bassist Bob Cranshaw from the original ‘Saturday Night Live’ band, and Lonnie Smith.Mr Rafferty also has the ability to play two simultaneous melodies on the guitar, while doing hip hop-flavoured ‘human beatbox’ with his mouth.“Adam’s repertoire is a combination of some of his own compositions, as well as Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson tunes, right up to today,” said Mr Crawford.Tickets are $30 for all nights except Sunday which is free. They are available at the Bermuda School of Music, Music Box and www.bdatix.bm. For more information telephone 296-5100. Concerts begin at 7.30pm each night except Sunday, when the performance begins at 5pm.