Welcome to the Guitar Garden…!

Hello to all of you and welcome to the Guitar Garden.

This first entry is all about the start of this website and what it’s all about. The main focus of this site is on my compositions for the acoustic guitar, in my case a nylonstring classical guitar. I’m a guitar teacher and live musician and play in a wide range of styles…

I started out with electric guitar when I was in my teens, played in fusion-rock bands, until my interest went more and more into the classical guitar, wich I studied at conservatory in the 90’s of the last century. A great interest in fingerstyle guitar during that time also ended up in my first compositions.

After finishing my studies and receiving my diploma, I stepped into the world of Early Music, partly by accident, but soon I was fascinated and began to study baroque guitar, colascione (a form of 17th century basslute), early renaissance lute and so on.

I made a step into the world of Early Music in Austria, wich gave opportunity to concerts, CD Recordings, contact with Festivals, instrument builders and a lot of great musicians…

There was also a quartet formation during that time, wich played great crossover music between early music and jazz, so I ended up amplifying a little medieval lute for this. I also had a huge interest in Jazz and improvised music, although I never really was a jazz guitarist, I love and play until today early swing in different settings, like in a duo with piano, voice, saxofon, violin, or occasionally in some trio and quartett settings.

I even had a short time in my musical life where I did first performances of contemporary music of Austrian composers, for concerts and radio broadcast, interestingly again also for electric guitar…I even improvised music for a silent movie with electric guitar and a medieval organ in an old church in Spain… So a never ending journey, a lot of opportunities, but there was one thing that stayed the same all the time: I always composed my own music for guitar. My compositions. My repertoire. My cosmos. Call it whatever.

And all the influences of the many years, all the different playing situations, genres, happy moments in life, crisis…they are all written down in my music, like a daybook. I never really specialized, or was able to specialize…I once read an interview with Dominic Miller, where he said: „I know a little bit of a lot.“ I like that statement and it really hits the point. My compositions reflect my musical influences and the wide field of impressions that are collected in my „musical brain“.
So here and now is the right time and the right place to bring all that creative output in front of a little growing audience. The Guitar Garden is alive. I will not only represent my compositions here, I would like to stay in touch with a community of
people who are interested in the same fields or want to get in contact with this blog to present their own ideas about life and art, maybe also not only guitar related…
So I hope you enjoyed this first entry. After all these general infos abut myself and the Guitar Garden there will be blog articles in the near future about specific guitar related topics.
See you and best wishes…