Graduating in 2014 from Austin Peay State Univerisity where he studied with Stanley Yates, Tom Torrisi has just begun his doctoral studies at the renown Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY where he was awarded a teaching assistantship alongside Thomas Viloteau of France.
There is a new guitar festival to look forward to. October 24-26 I would like to invite you to join me in attending the Eastern Shore Guitar Festival and Workshop hosted by guitar virtuoso Matt Palmer. The festival will be at the Washington College Department of Music in Chestertown, MD where Dr. Palmer is currently directing guitar studies.
Here is a heavily used pattern found in guitar designs called "herringbone".
There are lots of festivals / competitions upon us. I would attend all of them if time permitted. The links below take you to the festival's webpage with more info. As always, if any of you are making the journey down I-40 past Cookeville to attend one of these events then stop by and say hello.
Baldwin Wallace Guitar Festival - May 17-18
Out of my own effort to know how everyone is getting along with their guitars, I contacted the owners of my instruments and am sharing the updates they gave me below:
Guitar No. 2 - Dylan Flanagan
Fitting the binding and purfling today. I have improved my process over time, but nothing brings about the best results in this step of guitar making better than good ole fashioned patience and concentration.
Just in case you didn’t know, there is quite a shift happening today in the business of sharing music. Of course, the internet is to blame. Today it is being accused of devaluing music.
It’s tough to trust your intuition. It’s easily referred to as a flakey source of misinformation and untrustworthy emotions. Because the understanding of the physics behind the guitar are understood much more clearly than ever before there is a temptation (and many luthiers are taking full advantage of it) to claim that the superiority of one’s guitar design is fact - that rigorous scientific testing and the performance of obscure mathematical algorithms have led to the perfect design.
I have pretty much used Savarez Alliance high tension strings since my college guitar professor told me that it was the path towards getting more projection out of the guitar that I had at the time. It was a Hanika guitar that I bought at the NAMM show, a big event that I enjoyed as a result of being an employee of Gallagher Guitar Co. in 2001. The Hanika guitar was a good guitar, albeit rather hard to play, and having never used high tension carbon strings, it was like getting a new guitar.
The first public performance of Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the symphony that is now arguably accepted as the greatest symphonic work of all time, was surprisingly unpopular with the critics on the night of its first public performance (Vienna, April 7, 1805).
On the other hand, a new symphony premiered by Anton Eberl that same night was a huge success.
Here they are...