Event canceled after summer 2019 move to Bozeman

The Crown Guitar Workshop and Festival, which had planned to switch venues from Bigfork to Bozeman this year, has canceled its premier in Bozeman this summer, the event board of directors announced.

“Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are forced to cancel the Crown Guitar Workshop and Festival scheduled for the end of July in Bozeman,” the board of directors said in a statement. “We are disappointed because we were looking forward to establishing a presence in Bozeman, and we have had a history of outstanding events in the Flathead that have inspired hundreds of players and thousands of patrons. Our artists in the past have been an incredible part of our journey. It is very disappointing to have to cancel this event, and we want to thank all of our participants, donors, sponsors and volunteers that have supported the Crown in the past.”

Based in Bigfork, the Crown Guitar Festival has brought some of the world’s best guitarists to Montana to perform concerts and teach students — young and old alike — the craft of playing the guitar.

The Bozeman event had been planned from July 31 through Aug. 3.

Originally planned to take place in both Bigfork and Bozeman in 2019, the Crown of the Continent Foundation and Festival board announced in March that the festival would take a one-year hiatus from its Bigfork venue, but still would be held in Bozeman, returning in 2020 to Bigfork.

Crown was created 10 years ago in Bigfork to help build an outstanding guitar education and mentoring program for paying participants and dozens of scholarship recipients each year, a press release stated.

The goal is to boost the participants’ artistic and music career development in a relaxed, supportive, non-competitive atmosphere where students and concert goers can share a guitar lick, meal, drinks or conversation with some of the world’s best guitarists.

In the last eight years, the nonprofit organization awarded 156 scholarships to students and teachers from Montana. In the workshops, students studied a specific genre and collaborated and performed together.