Each year, an estimated 2,000 guitar shows and festivals take place at locations worldwide. This year, May 4–6, the 41^st Annual Dallas International Guitar Festival will be held at Dallas Market Hall, where all things guitar are the focus. Collectors, dealers, vintage masterpieces, celebrities and music lovers gather for an extravaganza that got its unpretentious beginnings in 1978 in a Dallas hotel room. In Iserlohn, Germany, July 22–29, the 27^th International Guitar Competition Iserlohn 2018 will include evening concerts, more than 600 individual lessons, a lecture series and a guitar orchestra with England’s Gerald Garcia. In the fall, Clonakilty, West Cork, Ireland, will be host to the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival. Dates are Sept. 19–23, with program details available later this year.

Tune up before packing for your festival of choice with the newly released Leo Fender: The Quiet Giant Heard Around the World — A Chance to Know the Man Behind the Legacy (Leadership Institute Press, 2017). Penned by Fender’s wife Phyllis Fender and Randall Bell, Ph.D., this riveting memoir offers an inside look at the unpretentious, shy genius who would become the creator of the Fender electric guitar, the instrument favored by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, George Harrison and others who rank as some of the world’s most accomplished musicians. Fender, who passed away in 1991, founded the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company in 1946, as well as G&L Musical Instruments. Despite the fact he garnered a host of prestigious awards and his company became worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Fender continued to live in a modest mobile home. The book reveals mesmerizing details of his life, idiosyncrasies and work — the perfect prelude to listening to musicians playing the Fender guitar live on stage.