Posts from ‘News’
Memorial Day Sale
In celebration of Memorial day GSI is offering 25% off all accessory web orders up to $1,000*. That’s 25% off all strings, cases, furniture, electronics, machine heads, books, CDs, DVDs – almost anything in the store. Simply enter coupon code MEMDAY2013 at checkout to receive your discount. Sale ends Tuesday.
*Can’t be combined with other offers, maximum discount is $250, discount does not apply to guitars or Guitar Specials.
Current Inventory | Past Inventory
Lorenzo Frignani lives and works in the charming city of Modena, Italy. Established as an independent luthier in 1986, he has been building a variety of instruments including guitars, lutes and violins for nearly 3 decades. In addition to his own concert guitar models, Frignani makes a unique replica of a 1910 Manuel Ramirez guitar (Frignani owns the original and has studied it extensively) and gives it an aged/distressed look, built into each new guitar – a technique common in the violin world which he has adopted for this model. Frignani has won many awards for his guitars and his lutes both in Italy and around the world (Including his nomination in July of 2011 as “luthier of the year” by the town of Fiuggi-Lazio.).
Here’s the final guitar that will be featured in our upcoming event with Scott Tennant and Pepe Romero Jr. featuring guitars from the Romero collection that have inspired Pepe Jr. – an 1886 cypress and spruce guitar by Antonio de Torres. Pepe says “My father bought this Torres on my grandfathers advice 2 days before he passed away in 1996. The guitar has haunting basses and trebles that sing like only a guitar of over 120 years can do. It is as beautiful a sound as I’ve heard and packs plenty of power. It is an honor to be able to have a guitar like this to play and to hear. Torres deserves every bit of credit that he has earned, what a master!”
One of the amazing details about this guitar is that it has repairs made with discarded music from Celedonio Romero. Apparently Celedonio would often practice in Santos Hernandez’ workshop, so that Santos’ trash can was filled with discarded music – arrangements Celedonio would have been working on – and when Santos needed some paper for a repair he would grab it from the trash can. In this case, some of that music made its way into the guitar, as you can see in the photos. I don’t imagine that either Celedonio or Santos was unaware of the beauty of doing a repair in this way.
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Hungarian guitarist Andras Csaki came by GSI last week. He’s been touring the world and winning competitions since 1999 – you can read more about him here. He played Dowland’s ‘Farewell’ on a Sakurai-Kohno Professional-J spruce guitar and Barrios’ Vals Op. 8, No. 3 on a Thomas Norwood ’1932 Esteso’ model.
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13th Annual New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes.
The registration deadline is just a few days away – May 15th – so click here for more info on the NYGS website.
BE A PLAYER: Exploring Entrepreneurship and Creating Performance Opportunities
Welcome to the 13th annual New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes College. We are thrilled to bring together again an international faculty of renowned performers and teachers for five full days of workshops and master classes in New York City. The New York Guitar Seminar is open to high school, college, and graduate students; music teachers; professional performers; and all classical guitar players seeking to broaden their musical horizons. Performers at all levels of playing skill are welcome.
We’ve got two guitars From Granada builder Lucas Martin just finished and ready to make their way over to us – a flamenco blanca and a cedar and rosewood classical. Lucas’s guitars don’t tend to stay in the showroom for very long – between the sound, the playability, the beautiful workmanship and the price they’ve become very popular very quickly.
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The next guitar that will be featured in our upcoming Scott Tennant/Pepe Romero Jr. event on June 1st is this 1958 Miguel Rodriguez flamenco nicknamed ‘Henrietta’ (Henrietta was the name of the previous owner). This was the guitar that Pepe Romero used to record his Flamenco Fenomeno record when he was just 15 and his next record at age 18. Celedonio Romero also recoded on this guitar. When Pepe Jr. turned 15 his father gave it to him, and Pepe Jr. says that he “played it for years and was moved by the beauty and raw attack that this guitar has.”
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We’ve got a bunch of great flamencos at the moment, so I thought I’d record the same little bit – a Soleá Por Buleria falseta of mine – on five of them. I ended up recording an 2006 Antonio Raya, a 2012 Juan Fernandez, a 2012 Juan Fabian Manjon, a 1998 Lester DeVoe and a 2010 pau ferro Felipe Conde, the only negra of the bunch.
This 1969 Hermann Hauser II is the next guitar that will be featured in our event with Scott Tennant and Pepe Romero Jr. on June 1st. Pepe Jr. says that he considers Hauser II one of the all-time great builders and that this guitar has power, warmth and a unique sound, and that it is the guitar which to him best represents this master. He also says that it’s the guitar he often heard his father preparing for concerts with. Check out this video of Pepe Sr. playing some Sabicas bulerias on this guitar.
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From the Ramirez blog, here’s a really cool story about the 100th anniversary of Segovia’s first playing a Ramirez. The first video tells the story of Segovia getting that guitar and of Amalia Ramirez wanting to honor that moment 100 years later with John Mills.
“Andres Segovia first played Ramirez guitars in 1912, up to 1937, when he changed to the German maker Herman Hauser. In the early 1960’s he moved back to using Ramirez guitars, with a brand new design called the ‘Tradicional’ Model 1a, an instrument with a longer string length and larger fingerboard, using the then newly discovered Western Red Cedar wood for the soundboard, built specifically for Segovia. 100 years later, legendary British classical guitarist John Mills presents a series of national and international recitals in which he uses this special Ramirez guitar, kindly supplied by Amalia Ramirez. John plays a selection of pieces written for and transcribed by Segovia, including works by Tansman, Torroba, Haug and Castelnuovo – Tedesco. In the summer of 2013, a special double CD and booklet will be released as part of the project.”
