Jonathan Preiss
In June 2017 Jonathan Preiss led an engaging, high energy Brazilian workshop. Fast paced, packed with energy. Guitars, cavaquinho, seven string guitar and a vast array of percussion instruments. He used a simple layering of rhythms and textures ending in complex results, immersing us in Lundu, Polca, Maxixe and Choros.
Jonathan’s website: Jonathanpreiss.com/about
Melanie Spanswick
The guest speaker for the April 2016 guitar workshop was the fabulous Melanie Spanswick (pianist). She gave a brilliant workshop about sight-reading and memorisation and everyone took away a lot of ideas. Coupled with my talk on fretboard knowledge and strategies to learn the fretboard more thoroughly, everyone felt more comfortable with the prospect of sight-reading by the end! Hugely enjoyable.
Melanie’s website: Melaniespanswick.com
Clare Cullen
I invited Clare Cullen from the Ashtead Chiropractic Clinic, Surrey, to deliver a presentation at the latest guitar workshop in Dorking, June 2016. She spoke about posture, muscle use and the skeletal system and she highlighted what guitar players need to watch out for when practising or performing in order to keep the body healthy and functioning properly.
Clare’s website: Clarecullen.co.uk
Ashtead Chiropractic Clinic: Ashtead-chiropractic-clinic.com
Francisco Antonio
The sensational flamenco artist, Francisco Antonio took us through rasguedos, the 12 beat compass and Alegrias. A start to the de-mystification of this Spanish Art.
Francisco’s website: Estiloflamenco.com
Peter Stewart
The brilliant Peter Stewart, teacher at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, gave us a talk on tone production and nail care.
The Royal Conservatoire: rcs.ac.uk/staff/peter-stewart/
Ending 2015 with a swing, my Dorking guitar workshop centred on popular music arrangements for classical guitar.
Having heard glorious singing to “What a Wonderful World!” in Louis Armstrong fashion, I had it humming around my head for days after!
Other highlights for me were a Russian song beautifully sung with guitar accompaniment and a simple yet extremely effective Bob Dylan arrangement of “Blowin’ in the Wind”.