Although the guitar is now indelibly associated with popular music, it has a large and beautiful repertory as an acoustic instrument that stretches back centuries before Les Paul. Starting tomorrow night, the 2011 Miami International Guitar Festival comes to Clarke Recital Hall at the University of Miami for three concerts of music featuring current masters of the instrument, including UM’s Rene Gonzalez, Tom Lippincott, Yovianna Garcia and William Yelverton.

Also on hand for the festival is the Miami Guitar Trio (pictured above), which was formed by three UM students in 2009 and which plans to release its first recording this fall.

Gonzalez, who heads the classical music program at UM, is a much-respected teacher and player who also heads the UM Guitar Camp, which is ongoing this week. He’s written teaching methods and released recordings, and his half of Thursday’s recital at 8 p.m. will include music by the Argentine composer Julio Sagreras, perhaps best known for “El Colibri (The Hummingbird),” which Gonzalez plays here.

The second half of the concert will be handled by Lippincott, a jazz player and proponent of the eight-string guitar who has played gigs in South Florida for two decades. He teaches at Miami-Dade College and Florida Atlantic University and will play jazz standards (here he is playing George Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy“), as well as original pieces.

Friday’s 8 p.m. recital starts with Garcia, who released a disc earlier this year (Portrait) of music by Bach, Mauro Giuliani and others. She hails from Puerto Rico and teaches at the Hartt School conservatory at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. She’s got several videos and audio clips out there, including music by the Paraguayan guitarist and composer Agustin Barrios (here’s the waltz No. 4 from his Op. 8 collection).

Yelverton, who will play the second half of the concert Friday, teaches at Middle Tennessee State and has a doctorate from Florida State. He has a nice feel for Baroque music, as evidenced in this Allemande from the sixth (BWV 817) of the Bach French Suites.

The final concert at 4 p.m. on Saturday will be devoted to the Miami Guitar Trio, whose members are Federico Bonacossa, Federico Musgrove and Alan Nguyen. Each man will play a short solo segment in the first half, then team up as the trio in the second half. As the trio, the group will perform pieces such as Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 and a new piece, Charcos, written for them by the guitarist Jaime Guiscafre, who studied at UM and teaches at Clarke College in Iowa.

They’ll also play original music by Bonacossa, as well as his arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango (which they played in this October performance).

Each kind of music has its own distinct repertoire and culture, and guitar music (not counting its use in rock bands, which is a different animal) is no exception. A good deal of Baroque music sounds lovely on classical guitar, being lute-like, and there are a host of composers from Latin America in particular who specialized in guitar music and whose work is not widely known outside of the genre.

Taking in concerts of the Guitar Festival will be a smart way to get familiar with this branch of music and also hear some young stars of the instrument make their mark.

Tickets for these performances are $15; call 305-284-2083 or visit the Facebook page of the Miami International Guitar Festival.