Guitarist Johannes Möller, the 2010 first prize winner of the Guitar Foundation of America’s Concert Artist Competition, opens the spring Artspree stage at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, at the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in UALR’s Fine Arts Building.

Tickets are $20 general admission, $80 for the season, $10 for non-UALR students, and free for UALR students. Group discounts are available. For tickets or more information, call the Artspree office at 501-569-8993.

Möller began performing at 13, and his performances now total more than 500 and span the continents of Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

In 2010 he was awarded first prize in the GFA Concert Artist Competition, considered by many to be the most prestigious guitar competition in the world. As part of this prize, he will perform more than 50 concerts throughout the United States, including a Carnegie Hall debut in the Weill Recital Hall, Canada, Mexico, South America, and China.

At the age of 12 as a self-taught composer, Möller experienced an outburst of creativity that resulted in a large quantity of pieces that were performed and recorded with great critical acclaim. A selection of these works was recorded on a CD with some of the top instrumentalists in Sweden when he was 14. In his later teenage years, Möller continued composing, experimenting with various compositional styles and techniques.

Möller earned a bachelor’s degree in music from the Royal College of Music in London where he studied guitar with Gary Ryan and Carlos Bonell and composition with William Mival.

He received a master’s degree from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague where he studied with Zoran Dukic. He also received a scholarship from the Royal Conservatoire that allowed him to study privately with Pavel Steidl in the Czech Republic as well as composition lessons with Dusan Bogdanovic in the United States. He completed a second master’s degree at the Conservatoire in Amsterdam where he studied guitar with Lex Eisenhardt and composition with Richard Ayers.