Have you heard the music of Leo Brouwer played on a steel-string guitar? Don’t be surprised to hear classically-schooled rocker Gretchen Menn performing on this custom 2000 Santa Cruz PJ from Acoustic Guitar magazine’s 10th Anniversary Collection. In celebration of the magazine’s 30th anniversary in 2020, we’re putting our collection up for auction from April 20 through May 10, giving you the opportunity to bid on a piece of guitar history and support guitar education at the same time. 50% […]]]>
When L.A.-based guitarist Ben Woods stopped by for Classical Guitar Sessions, we expected he might play something a bit unorthodox. After all, though he is widely regarded as a fine traditional flamenco player, he is also well-known for his flamenco-inspired interpretations of heavy metal rock tunes and originals, played under the name Flametal. Sure enough, the first piece he laid down for our cameras was an abridged version of the Foo Fighters’ Grammy-nominated song “The Pretender” from 2007’s Echoes, Silence, […]]]>
Both as a solo performer and as a member of the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, Matthew Fish has specialized in playing works by contemporary composers. Indeed, he first showed up on our radar when he sent us his excellent 2016 debut CD, From Her Source to the Sea, which consists entirely of pieces by the fine Swedish guitarist/composer Johannes Möller. “I first encountered Johannes’ music after he won the GFA competition in 2010,” Matthew told us recently. “I played his piece Song to […]]]>
Based in Washington D.C., Russian-American guitarist Piotr Pakhomkin is one of the bright lights of the younger generation of classical musicians, a player of tremendous skill and sensitivity. A few months ago, we saluted his victory in the prestigious 5th Respighi International Soloist Competition, sponsored by the Chamber Orchestra of New York in conjunction with the city of Bologna, Italy. It’s one of the rare major contests that features musicians who play different instruments—his fellow finalists included two harpists and a pianist. Not […]]]>
Russian-born, Israeli-raised Yuri Liberzon has an impeccable pedigree as a guitarist: At the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, he studied with Manuel Barrueco to earn his Bachelor’s degree; then he got his Master’s from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Benjamin Verdery. (Liberzon’s most influential teacher at a young age was Maestro Yaron Hasson, with whom he studied for six years before coming to the United States.) A current resident of the […]]]>
American guitarist Marc Teicholz has enjoyed quite a career since he won first prize at the Guitar Foundation of America’s annual international competition in 1989. Besides touring throughout Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia, he has recorded several outstanding discs, including two devoted entirely to Fernando Sor, another to Napoléon Coste, a third CD called Valseana, for which he recorded 18 waltzes from all periods on 18 vintage guitars, and an album of duets with soprano Laura Claycomb, titled Open […]]]>
Versatile guitarists Christopher Mallett and Robert Miller of DuoSF founded and teach at the California Conservatory of Guitar in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Santa Clara. Chris received his bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and his master’s from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Benjamin Verdery. Robert earned his bachelor’s from the Ithaca School of Music and a master’s from the Eastman School of Music. He also studied with Raphaella Smits at […]]]>
It’s thrilling to be able to inaugurate our new Classical Guitar Sessions video series with a performance by Grammy-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux, who kindly stopped by our studio when he was in the San Francisco Bay Area recently for a concert in the East Bay town of Livermore. Vieaux, who graced the cover of the Summer 2015 issue of Classical Guitar (you can read the interview here), brought his gorgeous-sounding Gernot Wagner guitar and played three pieces: Two movements from […]]]>