Guitar maker Amsterdam
This is Arne Willems, a classical guitarist from Wuppertal, Germany. The picture above was taken back in 2017 when he visited my workshop to collect his guitar. The picture can be found on his instagram account. Every now and then, Arne drops by for lunch, combining his holidays at the Dutch coast with a social visit. Last month he sent me two YouTube videos in which he premieres the work of his friend, composer Marius Bajog. I herewith forward them. Arne plays a cedar top concert model.
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!
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,
Sad update May 2019
This is a new cedar top I made for Guitar Salon International, my dealer in the USA.
Check out their website for the beautiful pictures taken of the instrument and it’s details.
This is Sanel Redzic performing in the documentary ‘An extraordinary life’ made by the Paris Guitar Foundation. Sanel Redzic tells about the coincidence that played an important role in his life, what taking part in competitions meant for him and about his study in Weimar.
Augustin Pesnon, founder of the Paris Guitar Foundation shot the documentary himself as you can see in his vlog.
This is Dragan Marinkovic, a guitarist from Bosnia Herzegovina. He is working as a professor in elementary and secondary music school. A couple of years ago he organized a guitar festival in Banja Luka in Bosnia where two of the competitors playing my guitars, won the competition in their categories. Dragan liked their guitars and later he bought one himself.
Dragan Marinkovic has his own YouTube Channel where he uploads his arrangements of songs by Tina Turner, David Bowie, Sting, a.o.. Recently he sent me an email to let me know that he was very pleased with the instrument
which turned out to be a great recording instrument as well.
To underline this he made this beautiful recording of Il Sentimentale opus 148, nr. 4 by Mauro Giuliani.
This is Drew Henderson performing Allemande BWV 996 by J.S. Bach. The Allemande consists of two parts, both repeated with ornaments. This makes four parts in one piece which in this video are used to compare four different guitars, built by four different makers.
In order of ‘appearance’ you hear instruments by Douglass Scott, Mathew Rubendall and James White. From 2:05 you can listen to a cedar top 2A guitar by me.
Listen and judge yourself. The 2A guitar from this video can be bought at the Canadian store Grand Salon the Guitare where the video was recorded. You can order a 2A guitar with one of my dealers or directly with me.
This is Aitor Hernández a Spanish guitarist, living in Madrid. He sent me an email long time ago, to let me know he bought a guitar of mine at Casa Luthier in Barcelona. Aitor Hernández and I never met but thanks to Google I know he used to form a duo with guitarist Sergio Sleiman. More recently he started a duo with a violinist as well as with his sister, soprano Saioa Hernández. He is playing concerts and is working as a teacher at Escuela de Música Prolat.
In his email he included a link to the video below in which he plays Etude 12 by H. Villa Lobos. It was recorded a while ago. More recent video’s can be found here .
This is ‘Estación Edén, guitar works from Uruguay part two’, the latest CD of Gustavo Pazos. Just like the former one it mainly consists of works by Gustavo himself. Compositions he beautifully describes as ‘musical reflections of never written stories’.
To get an idea I included a fragment of the first track: Cancion para (Ana) Lisa.
You can order the CD at Music & Words
This is Chih-Hsien Tseng. She is a Taiwanese guitar student, studying in Germany. Together with her friend and collegue guitarist Arne Willems she came to the workshop to pick up her new guitar. Next month we’ll meet again. In Taiwan, where her former teacher, Alfredo Huang organizes a festival where I’m invited to give a lecture.
