Rick Balestra is a guy who spends his life giving guitar lessons to students and being a professor of guitar at SUNY Oswego, Hamilton College and Colgate University, so it is fairly natural that he thinks about the guitar quite often.

Six years ago, he not only thought about the guitar, he thought about the musicians who adore it as much as he does, and in fact dreamed about bringing them together to learn more about it, and to teach others the tricks of the trade.

“In a nutshell, I felt there was a real need for CNY to have a venue where great jazz guitarists could come to one meeting place. For students of the guitar, or even semi-professionals, it might be too prohibitive to drive five hours to New York,” Balestra said. “The idea was, well, put it there and maybe people will come. It's kind of cool I've actually seen the dream come to a reality, and I've seen people come out and support and enjoy the event.”

Starting in 2000, Balestra has organized the guitar festival every year. John Abercrombie was the first headliner and has also had such phenoms as Peter Leitch, Charlie Hunter, Rodney Jones and this year Mike Stern.

This year's instructors include Balestra, Roni Ben-Hur who will present workshops on “Expanding Your Chord Vocabulary Using the Drop 2 and Drop 3 Voicing” and “Incorporating the Be Bop Language into Your Solos,” John Stowell, Michael Nirsberger and more.

Concert performers will include The Mike Stern Trio, whose front man, Mike Stern, played with Blood, Sweat and Tears at 22 and shared the stage with Miles Davis during his career.

Also performing will be the Rez Abbasi Quartet, credited with playing with a distinctive world-jazz fusion guitar mix. Dennis Koster will also play his curiously separate brands of flamenco and classical guitar.

This is the last jazz guitar festival that Balestra will run annually. After this, he will run them biannually. Balestra has “bigger aspirations” of making the event larger and changing it from a one-day festival to a two-day festival in 2008.

He also hopes to change the name and diversify the attendees.

“I love playing different styles of music. The guitar is a wonderful instrument; you really can do different styles and play in different genres,” Balestra said.

Part of Balestra's success is the company he keeps.

“It's kind of cool because I'm in a good relationship with most of the guys out there that are doing this,” Balestra said.

If you go

What: Oswego Jazz Guitar Festival

When: all day Saturday

Where: SUNY Oswego campus

For details: Full workshop and concert listing schedule at www.oswego.edu/jazzguitar

Tickets: Call 312-2141