spruce Archives - otto vowinkel

Matthijs van Delft

8 December 2017 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Matthijs van Delft, a young, Dutch guitarist, studying at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag with Fernando Cordas in his Young Talent Class. Matthijs came to the workshop together with his father to by a new guitar. Less than a month later he sent me an email, telling me that he is very happy with his guitar and won the junior competition of the Antwerpen Guitar Festival as well as the Leo Brouwer prize!

Well done Matthijs!! Congratulations!

Matthijs van Delft (photo Antwerp Guitar Festival)

Jan Depreter, Matthijs van Delft, Fernando Cordas , Izhar Elias (Foto KonCon)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Classical Guitar Studio Partita

11 April 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is guitarist Jongho Park performing the introduction of Sor’s opus 9, better known as the Mozart variations. The video is made by Classical Guitar Studio Partita, run by Minsu Yoo, my dealer in South Korea. Jongho Park is playing a concert guitar with a spruce top which I recently sent to South Korea.

Esther Steenbergen

6 March 2016 By Otto Vowinkel 2 Comments

Watch the video to see the hand of Hennie van der Vegt painting one of his famous blossoms. Esther used the painting for the cover of her latest CD which actually is an EP. It contains two pieces, Sakura, Theme and variations by Yuquijiro Yocoh and Bellefleur by Pieter van der Staak. I think she plays both of them beautifully. You can order the CD at her website. Of course it’s available for download as well.

Guitar Echoes

29 February 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Guitar Echoes, the debut solo CD of Yiannis Giagourtas, a guitarist from Greece, whom I wrote about earlier.

For my debut album I chose to record works from a few of my favorite composers. This selection lit my passion for music, in particular for the classical guitar. I hope these pieces will touch your soul as they have touched mine!

In the video you can listen to a track of Guitar Echoes: Gnossiene nr. 1 by Erik Satie.
Guitar Echoes is for sale at CD Baby.

Eduardo Diaz

24 January 2016 By Otto Vowinkel Leave a Comment

This is Eduardo Diaz, a guitarist- composer from Mexico, playing ‘Subiendo la Montaña’.

Inspired by the video of Yi Hui Wang Eduardo contacted me, to inquire about the model Yi Hui Wang is playing in the video. To avoid the waiting list he bought an instrument at GSI.

Eduardo Diaz has a very popular YouTube channel . Here he plays and promotes his compositions and arrangements. Most of them can be ordered at Per-Olov Kindgren’s online music shop.