A good day out
On Sunday we went down to London to see Stefano play a gig as part of the London Jazz festival. 
It was great to see Stefano and the ergonomic guitar, which I made for him, in action. I find it quite emotional to see one of my guitars played, particularly by such a talented musician as Stefano. They played a couple of pieces by John McLaughlin; coincidently I’ve still got my vinyl copy of his Shakti LP that I bought in 1976!
We also paid a visit to the William Morris Gallery which contains some beautiful artefacts from the Arts and Crafts movement. Here’s the stained glass window, designed by Burne-Jones, of St. Cecilia the patron saint of musicians (and luthiers?).
YouTube
Those of you who have seen my videos would have realised that I’m not much of a player. However, these two guys are! Check these out for some superlative guitar playing.
Matthew McGee
http://www.youtube.com/user/StupidHatMatt
Per-Olov Kindgren
http://www.youtube.com/user/AndanteLargo
It was great to see Stefano and the ergonomic guitar, which I made for him, in action. I find it quite emotional to see one of my guitars played, particularly by such a talented musician as Stefano. They played a couple of pieces by John McLaughlin; coincidently I’ve still got my vinyl copy of his Shakti LP that I bought in 1976!
We also paid a visit to the William Morris Gallery which contains some beautiful artefacts from the Arts and Crafts movement. Here’s the stained glass window, designed by Burne-Jones, of St. Cecilia the patron saint of musicians (and luthiers?).
YouTube
Those of you who have seen my videos would have realised that I’m not much of a player. However, these two guys are! Check these out for some superlative guitar playing.
Matthew McGee
http://www.youtube.com/user/StupidHatMatt
Per-Olov Kindgren
http://www.youtube.com/user/AndanteLargo
posted by Gary Nava, Luthier at 11:42 am
1 Comments:
Gary, I agree that seeing one of our guitars in the hands of a great player makes all the effort worthwhile. It reminds us that an instrument's ultimate purpose is to create beautiful music and that the luthier's primary role is to facilitate that.
As a hobbyist builder myself, I can relate to your comments about finding a safe, environmentally-friendly finish after wrestling with the subject for some time. I'm in the process of spraying a guitar using Grafted Coatings KTM-SV, a water-based oil urethane spar varnish. Unlike most of the other water-based finishes, it's had universally great press in the various lutherie forums and, despite my limited experience with sprayed finishes, I'm finding it pretty easy to use, once I'd diluted it a little and figured out the optimum settings on my spray gun.
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