spruce

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.

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Estudiando y descubriendo “La princesa”, guitarra de ensueño construida por el Master Luthier holandés Otto Vowinkel. Interpreto mi transcripción de la Sonata K.9/L413 de Domenico Scarlatti. Desde mi cuarto de hotel, justo frente a la Philharmonie de París. ¡En esta guitarra todo suena como una fantasía! #ottovowinkel
A post shared by José Antonio López (@aunasolaguitarra) on Jul 14, 2019 at 2:07pm PDT

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.

Tiana Taya

This is Tiana Taya, a Serbian guitarist living in Barcelona, Spain. She tagged me on Facebook, posting a recording of Se Ela Perguntar by the Brazilian composer Dilermando Reis. I think she plays it beautifully and asked her if I could share the video which I could, but for some reasons I couldn’t share it on my website. But then guitarist Ozan Saritepe found the video on the YouTube Channel of RM Acoustics, so here it is.

My concert model with maple back and sides played by Tiana in the video, is getting more and more populair now. Soon I will post about the one which just arrived at Guitar Salon International. Irina Kulikova will make a recording with it to which I am looking forward very much. But first Tiana Taya, on top of the mountain, playing Dilermando Reis.

Emil Hadžiefendić

This is Emil Hadžiefendić, a young, gifted guitarist from Tuzla. Like most succesfull guitarists from Bosnia Herzegovina, he is a student of the well known teacher Predrag Stanković about whom I wrote earlier.

Predrag Stanković started a Guitar Summer School with the unpronounceable name PRST. His former students Denis Azabagic and Sanel Redžić are also teaching at the PRST.

In the video below Emil is playing La Serenor, the first part of Collectici Intim by the Spanish composer Vicente Asencio. The video is an excerpt of a reportage about the festival by Ljetni Magazin. The reportage (in Serbo Croation) can be found here.

This Summer Emil took part in the Solo Guitar competition of the Transilvania Guitar Association and won the first prize! More information , again for the ones who read Serbo Croation can be found on Tuzlarije.

Emil Hadžiefendić plays a spruce concert model.

Matthijs van Delft

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

Thomas Vowinkel

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

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.

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.