Otto Vowinkel

Guitar maker Amsterdam

fifth bass Guitar

Benjamin Verdery – Scenes from Ellis Island

I wrote an email to New Yorker Benjamin Verdery. To check out how he is doing in these horrible Corona Times.

” Aloha Ester and Otto!!!!
… These are simply unprecedented times. I have not been out for 5 days and will finally today. We are being very vigilant and wearing masks and gloves and wiping everything!! We both have been doing on line teaching and I have been chatting and writing to friends around the world like you guys.”

It can’t be underestimated that this is a kind of war. Amsterdam ave is the main street to a hospital so we hear sirens frequently which is a reminder of all those in pain.

Every evening at 7:00 we go out on our little balcony ( we are so lucky to have that) and cheer the health care workers, doctors, nurses and delivery people and all on the front line. It’s very moving.

Benjamin also told me about his latest CD, Scenes from Ellis Island which was released with New Focus Recordings on February 14. The pictures below show the front and back. The latter taken in the great hall on Ellis Island.

“I can guarantee that very few guitars have been played in that hall. It’s not of course a concert hall but the hall where so many were examined before being allowed to go to land. It’s maybe appropriate that it be Dutch guitar there as you were the first Europeans to come to this Island and come on, I live on Amsterdam ave!!!! So it was meant to be.”

“It will be some time before we are allowed to send things from the post so please find the booklet . At the back of it is the photo of me and your insanely great baritone! “


Scenes from Ellis Island can be found on
Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | Website Benjamin Verdery

Benjamin Verdery and Billy Dean

These are Benjamin Verdery and Billy Dean, rising hip hop star and best friend of Mitsuko, Benjamins daughter. The girls have known each other since they were eight years old. The cooperation between Billy and Benjamin is only very recent. Mitsuko made two video’s of it: Black Bach and Start Now for which as you can see below, he used his fifth bass guitar.

fifth bass acclaim

Last week Benjamin Verdery sent me an e-mail

Last night I played a concert and while the Barri always sounds great for some reason, the humidity, the hall what ever, it sounded INCREDIBLE!!!! I almost started to play like Segovia used to and hold certain notes just to hear them longer, who cares about the phrase!!!!!!! I got so many great comments about the guitar! Onward we go! Thanks again for such a great instrument!

And Paul Fowles wrote a review of Suites for violoncello by Esther Steenbergen in the March issue of Classical Guitar Magazine

All acoustic basses sound alike which, in my experience, they usually do. Or at least they did prior to the arrival of the fifth-bass guitar designed and built by Amsterdam luthier Otto Vowinkel, husband of the performer. Tuned, as the name indicates, a fifth below a standard guitar. Steenbergen’s instrument has an unexpectedly bright and slightly metallic tone. But most of all, it has the one quality that somehow seems to have eluded the majority of acoustic basses both past and present. That quality is sustain.

 

otto vowinkel fifth bass guitar

Esther

This is Esther. I think she is a great guitarist but I am not the most objective person on this matter cause I married her. Today exactly 20 years ago. That’s what I call a good cause to put her on my site even though she is a little uncomfortable with it.

But she agrees she can’t be left out of my list of guitarists playing my instruments. So here she is. Beautifully playing Bach on a fifth bass guitar I made in 1994.