IGC 2025 News
Totally Guitars launched the International Guitar Camp in 2013. Our home is in the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California at the Green Mountain Retreat, just outside of Los Gatos. The IGC has evolved and improved quite a bit since our first back in 2013 and following is current information for 2025.
We now host two camps yearly, one in the Spring and one in the Fall, with a few significant differences. The Spring IGC is held the last weekend in April, runs Thursday through Sunday (April 24-27, 2025), and is limited to 20 students. The Spring agenda focuses on individual and small group instruction, along with collaborating with other students. One of the three nights is Open Mic Night, where all students are encouraged to play on stage for the group. Another night is Song Circle Night, a less formal way to share and enjoy songs with the group.
Our Spring 2025 IGC is now sold out and there is a waiting list. Hit the 'Contact Us' button at the top of this page to be added to the list. We anticipate a cancellation or two.
The Fall IGC is held the second week in September, runs Monday through Friday (September 8-12, 2025), and is limited to 30 students. The Fall IGC features three Open Mic nights where all students are encouraged to get up and play as many as a total of five songs over the three nights. No one is required to play at all, but the opportunity is there for everyone to work on their performing skills. We also hold a Performance Workshop the first full day where a few students play something for the group and then get feedback and comments from the staff as to how they could improve on stage.
Both camps include morning workshops with small group sessions, songwriting and individual instruction in the afternoons, evening sessions with varying emphases, and late-night jams in the historic Pueblo building. There is even some free time to practice, collaborate with others, or just enjoy the beautiful grounds of the Green Mountain Retreat.
There are opportunities to perform in a lower key setting with our Meal Sets. These are 20-minute sets during lunch and dinner, in more of a background music mode while people are eating and talking.
We will have the same fabulous staff of teachers and performers, featuring Dave Nachmanoff, Jim Bruno, Doug Young, Mike Mullins and yours truly.
Our morning sessions will typically start with an hour workshop of mine where we go into things like general theory, guitar geography, ear training, or sometimes just into questions from the group. The next two hours are break-out sessions where small groups of students rotate through four teachers in 25-minute blocks.
After lunch Dave leads sessions on Songwriting and all of us are available for one-on-one lessons. This daily schedule is pretty much the same for both camps.
As mentioned above, to maximize the IGC experience for everyone we must limit the Spring event to 20 campers and the Fall event to 30. Time is of the essence in registering and there are only a few spots available for Spring. We expect both camps to sell out well in advance, as has been the case most years.
Once again, I look forward to reconnecting with some IGC alumni and welcoming others into the IGC Family.
Neil
The Green Mountain Retreat contains a number of historic structures including a few that were relocated from the Tevis Estate in 1909. The Tevis Estate was located on the adjacent property which is now part of the Bear Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve (Mid-Peninsula Open Space District).
