A Little Classical Guitar Music.

You may never have heard of him, but Thomas ‘Tommy’ Emmanuel is an Australian guitar player.

No – wait, that’s pretty much like saying the Grand Canyon is a Colorado river valley!

Tommy Emmanuel is a Guitar God who comes from Australia. He can do things with a guitar that no-one else on the planet can do. He’s my idol.

He was born in 1955 and was given a guitar at age 4 and taught to play it by his Mum. By age 6 he was a working professional musician (and missed much early schooling).

He plays many instruments well, including Drums, but his first love is the guitar. His hero was Chet Atkins, one of the all time greats and in 1999 Chet awarded Tommy the title of ‘CGP – Certified Guitar Player’, one of only four musicians in the world with that honour. I don’t believe the others could do what Tommy does with a guitar.

Here’s just one small sample of his ability, recorded in 1991 when he was a ‘young’ 36 year old playing at a shopping mall in Sydney.

Try to bear in mind that he is the only musician playing and all the sounds come from a 6 string acoustic guitar. Listen to the video, then listen to it again and try to follow to how many different styles of string playing he does. The man is simply amazing. 🙂

Tommy has so far released 26 albums of guitar music but has collaborated on many more. If you like listening to guitar (of any genre) i thoroughly recommend you buy one, if you can stop at one.

 

love.