If you didn’t see my last post on the previous Royal Greenwich Guitar Festival, then it’s worth checking it out here.
2022 Edition
On probably the hottest week in London the 2022 edition of the Royal Greenwich Guitar Festival 2022 kicked off. Three days of fantastic concerts, lessons, students and trips to the pub.
Based at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, the festival has been running every year since 2015, and run by Graham Anthony Devine. This years festival was full of familiar faces as well as a lot of new ones, including students from The Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
The featured evening concerts were performed by Graham Anthony Devine, Carlos Bonell and Paul Galbraith.
This years Guitar Makers Expo was attended by luthiers – Miles Henderson Smith, Stephen Eden, Graham Emes, Ryan Gibson, Pete Beer, Steve Toon, Earl Marsh. Each guitar maker brought along two guitars for the attendees to try. I brought along a recently finished McClaren Concert Classical model and the soon to be released, McClaren P-8 model. Both guitars gained a lot of interest, and everyone seemed to enjoy trying them. Both guitars I took with me are now for sale, and will also be with me at this years West Dean Guitar Festival in August.
EXPO concert
This years Expo concert was held at the St.Alfege church in Greenwich. 3 guitarists, Harold Gordon-Smith, Nick Tait and Luke Tyrrell, played one guitar from each guitar maker.
For me, Nick Tait played ‘Granada’ by Isaac Albeniz on my concert classical model guitar. Fortunately, one of my favourite pieces and one that suited the guitar very well. Nicks playing was fantastic, and here is the recording of the piece.
My guitars were played by a lot of people at the festival, including fantastic players Jonathan Parkin, Kolja Gibbs, Graham Anthony Devine and Kianush Robeson as well as many others. Kianush popped by the stand to try the Concert Classical guitar and record it. The video can be seen at the bottom of this page.
