Otto Vowinkel

Guitar maker Amsterdam

blog

Nina Fourie Gouws

This is Nina Fourie Gouws, AKA Nina_Guitar. I wrote about her earlier.
Nina is a South-African guitarist. Active as a concert player as well as a guitar lecturer at Stellenbosch Konservatorium where she teaches pre-undergraduate and undergraduate practical music studies, accompaniment, repertoire studies and teaching methodology.

Nina plays a cedar top concert guitar with, as you can see in the picture above, a beautiful back.

Nina is very active on Instagram where I found all photos in this post – taken by Marnhe Grové. Among other things, she uses Instagram to keep herself motivated and to share her ideas about practising .

Last year she challenged herself with a so-called # 100daysofpractice in which she posted a video of her progress every day. This year she is doing something similar but reduced the challenge to # 40daysofpractice. Below you can watch day 32: a short video from Asturias, recorded by candlelight due to a power outage.

Keep it up Nina, only 8 more days to go!

Summer School PrSt

These are Valentina Krempatic, Emil Hadziefendic and Hanna Jakac at the Summer School with the unpronouncable name PrSt.

This summer, invited by Sanel Redžić and Predrag Stanković, I visited the beautiful Eco Zone Zlača, one hour drive from Tuzla in Bosnia Herzegovina, where since 2016, the Tuzla Youth Arts Center organizes an annual summer camp for young guitarists.

In a beautiful setting, the students follow classes by four, top of the bill guitar teachers and at the same time, celebrate their holidays, because next to attending individual, group and ensemble lessons, there is plenty of time for hiking, swimming or just being lazy.

This Summer camp is a unique opportunity for young guitarists to be taught by Predrag Stanković, Denis Azabagić, Sanel Redžić and Boris Tešić as well as meeting other guitar enthusiasts. I totally recommend all youngsters to take a closer look at the site of Ljetna Skola guitare PrSt.

In the video below I uploaded a rehearsal of a guitar ensemble and pictures I made or found on Facebook. Just to give you an impression.

José Antonio López

This José Antonio López, a classical guitarist from Puerto Rico. Every year he travels through Europe, accompanying his students from the Universidad de Puerto Rico where he teaches at the Department of Humanities. Last year he paid me a visit.

This year he came to collect his guitar and to celebrate we went out for dinner. José Antonio is very active man. Performing, teaching, composing and traveling. He does it all and all with great dedication.

Check out his instagram account where he posted a lot of pictures and video’s of his new instrument: a concert guitar with maple back and sides and a spruce top. I herewith forward one which shows the beautiful bear claw spruce.

Bear claw _Spruce Guitar

A Maple Guitar for Guitar Salon International

Otto Vowinkel_Andy Lee_ Guitar Salon International

This is Andy Lee from Guitar Salon International. Andy attended the Frankfurter Messe where producers of instruments and accessories meet their suppliers and dealers. Because Andy came all the way from Santa Monica – California, he decided to combine Frankurt with a visit to Amsterdam where we had dinner together in one of my favorite restaurants: Hotel de Goudfazant.

  • Guitar_Salon_International_Otto_Vowinkel_Maple_Spruce_Detail
  • Guitar_Salon_International_Otto_Vowinkel Maple Spruce

I recently sent a maple concert guitar to GSI, with a beautiful bearclaw spruce top, as you can see in the pictures above. The guitar was sold almost immediately, which is good for both GSI and me, but a bit unfortunate for Irina Kulikova. She was planning to record a video with it, as she announces in the instagram post.

I also visited the Frankfurter Messe, just like last year when the video above was made, a short interview with Andy’s GSI colleagues, John Paul Trotter and David Collet. As you can see, already then I talk about how satisfied I am with the use of maple.

The interview above about the cooperation between GSI and me, is part of a longer reportage about GSI visiting the Frankfurter Messe in 2018. You can view this reportage here in full.

SoloDuo

These are Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela, better known as SoloDuo. They are standing in front of the Concertgebouw, the afternoon before their concert. We invited SoloDuo to perform in our series Meesters op de Gitaar which we have been organizing now for more 20 years. Lorenzo and Matteo seemed very relaxed about their concert and even dropped by in my workshop to try my guitars.

Their concert was one of the best guitar concerts I have ever heard. I didn’t believe it to be possible but their version of van Beethoven’s Pathetique was fantastic.

SoloDuo after a stunning performance for a sold out Concertgebouw.