blog - otto vowinkel

Kimiko Kawabata

6 March 2017 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Kimiko Kawabata, a Japanese calligraphy artist, living in Leiden (the Netherlands) since 1972.

Inspired by haikus of master poet Basho describing the beauty of the area of Fukushima, Kimiko made a series of calligraphies for an exposition in Huis de Pinto in Amsterdam.

Next weekend, during the closure of the exposition a series of concerts will take place. One of the concerts will be given by Hambre y Sed the guitar ensemble of which Kimoko Kawabata is a member.

The revenues of the exposition and concerts will be handed to the victims of Fukushima by Kimiko personally. Since the region was destroyed by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011, Kimoko travels to Fukushima at least once a year,

Tara Stewart

2 February 2017 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Tara Stewart taking a picture. Tara is flamenco aficionado, professional filmer and video editor. She shoots and edits all video’s for Guitar Salon International, my dealer in the USA.

A couple of weeks ago Tara came to Amsterdam for a holiday and brought her camera. She visited my workshop where I happened to be working on a new guitar for GSI! She took pictures and filmed and the beautiful result can be seen in GSI’s blog post Coming soon Otto Vowinkel.

While she was busy working, her boyfriend, Los Angelos Guitar Quartet member John Dearman, tried a new ceder top.

Thomas Vowinkel

12 December 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Thomas Vowinkel, an electric bass player from Germany who got interested in classical guitar playing. When he started looking for a new instrument he found out about a guitar maker in Amsterdam, named just like him!

Although my grandfather – named Otto Vowinkel too – comes from the same area as where Thomas Vowinkel comes from, it seems like that Thomas and I are not related family wise.

Thomas took some beautiful pictures of his stay in Amsterdam. The one on top he named The three Vowinkel’s.

Marcin Dylla

28 November 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Marcin Dylla, checking the acoustics of the hall of het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Marcin is a busy guy. If not traveling the world playing concerts, he works at the guitar faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as an Artist in Residence. Before he came to Amsterdam he was in Poland where he had just met his newly born.

We invited Marcin Dylla to come and play in our series Meesters op de Gitaar. In an almost full house he gave an very impressive, beautiful concert. The audience loved it.

Dylan Prentner

21 November 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Dylan Prentner. Last March he came to my workshop to pick up his new guitar. The photo was taken by his proud parents who joined him. Dylan is a student of Marcus de Jong at Gitaarschool de Gitarist and doing very well. With his new guitar he already won a couple of prices among which the gitaarschool Nederland talent award as well as the first price in his age category of the Antwerpen Gitaarfestival 2016.

dylan-prentner-wint-gitaarschool-nederland-talent-award

Dylan Prentner wins Gitaarschool Nederland talent award.
foto: Eric van Nieuwland source: Gitarist

In this video you can hear him play Nalu, with which he won the price for the best performance of the imposed piece by Johannes Möller.

Jason Vieaux in Amsterdam

19 September 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is the American guitarist Jason Vieaux, an hour and a half before the start of his concert in our guitar series Meesters op de Gitaar in het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Jason played a beautiful concert for a full house and the audience loved it.

It was Jason’s first time in Amsterdam. According to his shares on his twitter account I got the impression that he enjoyed his stay.

Frank Burks

5 September 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Frank Burks with his ‘new’ guitar. Frank Burks is a sought-after Dutch guitarist, arranger an accompanist. His field is mainly pop and jazz as shown in this video. Frank came to my workshop, looking for a nylon string, acoustic guitar and ended up buying Esther’s former guitar.

Frank Burks is member of the band of Karin Bloemen, a Dutch singer- comedienne. In the audio below he is accompanying her in a song about ‘the empty nest’, children leaving the parental home. One day this will be facing this too. Last month he became father of a beautiful daughter.

Changsha Guitar Festival

24 August 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

Zoran Dukic and Sanel Redzic at the Changsha Guitar Festival in China.

The Changsha Guitar Festival is an annual, international guitar festival which aims to promote world class guitar music in China. This Summer I visited the festival for the second time, taking advantage of the opportunity to personally deliver a guitar ordered by the chairman of the festival, Qingxiang Li.

At the festival of which Xuefei Yang is the artistic director, I bumped into Kuang Junhong. He is a student of Manuel Barrueco now and happened to have grown a lot since the last time he visited us.

Maarten Oomes

7 August 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Maarten Oomes, a young, Dutch guitarist, who came to my workshop to pick up his new guitar. In the video below you can hear him playing it for the very first time, performing the well known Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tarrega.

Maarten started playing at a young age and soon turned out to be a very talented player. Under supervision of his teacher Jan Penninkhof he won several prizes, among which the first prize of the Prinses Christina Concours and the National Guitar Award.

Maarten Oomes seems to be a real Homo Universalis. In September he will start at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam studying Medicine.

Update August 30, 2017
With the greatest possible reluctance, I have to post the following update:
Due to a terrible occurrence, Maarten Oomes died on August 24, 2017.

Nelson Faria

2 June 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Nelson Faria together with the legendary guitarist João Bosco.

Nelson Faria is a Brazilian guitarist, arranger and teacher. He performed with the greatest artists, can be listened to on numerous recordings and wrote a standard work for guitarists about how to play Brazilian music.

His program Um café lá em casa (a coffee at home) is ingenious in its simplicity: inviting colleague musicians for a coffee and a talk about their life, career and music. The conversations are in Portuguese but also for non Portuguese speakers it’s worth watching since live music forms it’s main part. A real must see for all those who love – Brazilian – music.

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