David Collett - Surrounded by Guitars

Whether you are serious about the classical guitar or just the average admirer, there is no doubt that you have come across the name Guitar Salon International, or GSI for short. Perhaps you have spent time browsing their inventory of fine classical guitars, adding to your Wishlist another dream instrument, or maybe you have stumbled upon their ever-growing Youtube Channel in search of that new piece you’re working on. Whatever the case may be, there is no denying that over the past twenty years, GSI has been busy establishing itself as an integral part of the modern classical guitar community.

In a way, they have been preserving the past, with their vast website they have cataloged a large number of guitars, documented luthiers, and have anecdotal and historical literature about their instruments as well. GSI has also been busy making history, with some very interesting projects where they have paired historical instruments with today’s most elite performers like Pepe Romero, Marc Teicholz, as well as a few others.

A large part of GSI’s success is due to their president, David Collett, who has been with the company since 2000, and there is no doubt that it has been his vision, passion for music, culture, history, and all things classical guitar which have played an integral role in GSI’s coming to prominence.

David recently sat down with us to discuss the Romeros, how he got into the business, Francisco Tarrega, spruce vs. cedar, Julian Bream, and much more.

David Collett, President of Guitar Salon International

Brad: I know that you have a close relationship with Romeros, how does it all begin with them?

David: I first became close to them when I was at UC San Diego, and the Romero’s, they weren’t on the faculty as university professors, they were just too busy, but they were the guys that the university outsourced the guitar students to. My teacher that I studied with while in High School, Vince Macaluso, had been a student of the Romeros in the early '60s. He was a very early student of the theirs, so, I was sort of in a Romero community from early on.

Celin was my primary teacher in those years. Pepe was very busy, he was only teaching graduate students, and I think that he only had maybe one or two students. I'd see him around, but I didn't really study with him back then, but since I've had my fair share of lessons. Another close connection, and this one is really the most important... Celin not only taught me technique, repertoire, and preparing for recitals, but he also shared with me his guitar collection. The Romeros have a large collection of guitars, and many of them historical instruments too. He taught me about the makers, told interesting stories, and I mean, they knew a lot of these guys, growing up in the Miguel Rodriguez workshop, they were friends with Hauser, and Celedonio (father) was very close friends with Santos Hernandez.

Brad: That is just an incredible part of history to have first hand knowledge of.

David: It truly is, and there were quite a few times when Celin wasn’t ready for my lesson, and Celedonio (father) would be there, showing me guitars, telling stories about his career, who he met along the way, and I am very fortunate to have had this head start learning about guitars from the Romeros, it is such a deep part of their life, they are surrounded by guitars.

Celin was so generous, he would let me play a lot of them, if I had a recital or performance coming up, and over the years I have really gotten to know what guitars do, how they differ, and what they're like. I didn’t know this at the time, but this was really priming me for the job at GSI.

David Collett at Guitar Salon International

I spent a year abroad when I was in my third year at university, went to Wales, my guitar teacher there was Howard Evans, and he kept me on track with my studies for that year. I also went to a bunch of concerts in London, found it very exciting, the whole concert scene, and in fact, I even saw Pepe play in London with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

When I came back from Wales, I still had two years of school left in order to figure things out, I was on the five year plan with a double major in music and economics. During my lessons, Celin and I would often discuss what I wanted to do for a career. I would say that I wasn’t sure, that becoming a professional performer seemed intense, but that I loved the guitar and had to somehow stay involved with classical guitar and music.

I mentioned to him that I might want to get involved with concert promotion, but he would often suggest that I get into the dealing of guitars. He would mention that there was a guy, Tim Miklaucic (CEO, Cordoba Music Group), up in Los Angeles, who might be able to help me, but I wasn’t very interested in this at the time.

I really liked Europe, and so I moved back to London for a year, but the whole time this idea from Celin was in my head, I kept thinking about it, maybe I should get into the guitar business. So, I went to visit this guy in London, Juan Teijeiro, he's the London Guitar Studio, I told him that I was interested in getting into the business.

Juan told me that he had been working his whole life, and that he was too tired to bring me on, that he knew if he did, things would most certainly pick up, and he just didn’t have the energy.

I ended up staying friends with Juan, but dropped the guitar dealing for a while, and ended up working at Wigmore Hall. The bottom of the barrel job, which was actually kind of fun. My job was to sit in the last row at Wigmore Hall, which is not a very big venue in London, it's mainly for chamber music, and soloists. I did see Fabio Zanon's debut, and a few others in that year.

But anyway, my job was to sit in the last row, bumping my head up against the wall, and above the stage was a red light, if it started flashing, this meant that there was a fire backstage, and it was my job to evacuate the building. In hundreds of years at Wigmore Hall, they've never had a fire. Basically, I just got to sit in the back and listen to concerts three or four nights a week, which was really awesome.

I came back to California a year later, and went to see Celin, he brought up Tim Miklaucic again, and insisted on setting up an introduction. So, I went up to LA for the meeting, and the funny thing is, Tim called Celin later that day to ask him who I was, and Celin told him that I was just a student of his who might be a tad bit too confident. A few days later, Tim called me up to let me know that I was in, and I've been with GSI ever since.

I still work a lot with the Romeros, and anytime I see Pepe, he will still make me play a little something for him, and now his son, Pepe Jr. is a guitar maker, and we will work with him and see what he’s up to. We have done a lot of fun projects with Pepe, a few years ago, he was having some work done on his home in Granada, and the architect who was doing the work, was also working on a few other projects around the city. One of them was really interesting, they were rebuilding the roof of the Hospital Real, in Granada, which had been originally built in 1492.

Yeah, the same year of Columbus, old, and it was a building project undertaken by Queen Isabella. She was building all over Spain in celebration of the end of Islam and the totality of Catholicism now ruling in Spain. The beams that were in the church roof, were made of pine, and so Pepe's architect doing his renovation, was also tearing all this old pine out that had been there since 1492.

Brad: Just incredible.

David: Yeah, and he suggested to Pepe that they use this pine in his house for some stairs and other decor. This was a great idea, and Pepe immediately thought that it might be good for a guitar too. He told a luthier friend of his in Germany, Edmund Blochinger… many people aren’t aware, but it turns out that Pepe had already owned a Torres pine top, so, even Torres was making pine top guitars at one time.

Brad: I have never heard that, about a pine soundboard.

David: Yeah, yeah. It's very rare, but we did have a pine Torres in the shop before too. Once I had asked Blochinger why it isn't used more often, and he explained that it takes far longer for it to age, there's more sap, and the sap takes a lot longer to dry. Anyway, there was this whole thing, we did this fun project where Edmund built a couple of these guitars with the old pine wood from the church.

**2017 Edmund Blöchinger "1492 Granada Pine"**

To celebrate this project, I went down to the Romero house with my film guy at the time, Kai Narezo, and we filmed Pepe and I talking about this pine from the church, we brought his Torres out, and we showed the Blochinger guitar. Pepe gave a few performances on the instruments, and you can now watch them on our YouTube channel. (Pepe’s Performance)

Most recently, I was able to get all three of Tarrega's Torres guitars together. This was the first time that they've been united since 1909, when Tarrega died, his family sold them all off. The first one went to Argentina, and now It's in Beverly Hills. The second one went off to Cuba, and now in Salt Lake City, and the third one had not left Spain until about five or six years ago, and then it went to the East Coast. So, we jumped through a lot of hoops, but managed to got them all here. Then I started to think about what to do with them, and obviously Pepe was the first thought to come to my mind.

Three guitars made by Antonio de Torres which were owned by Fransicco Tarrega.

To further the story, I was in Spain a few years ago with Blochinger, and we went to a cemetery in a little town called Castellon, where Tarrega is buried, to sort of pay our respects, the father of the modern guitar. While we were in the cemetery, there wasn’t anyone around, aside for like the grounds keeper or something. We asked him where Tarrega was, and he sort of pointed in a direction, but also mentioned that one of his students is buried over there, in another direction. Needless to say, we were intrigued. We found Tarrega's grave, paid our respects, but being intrigued as we were, wandered around looking for this student of his, and lo and behold, we found that it was Daniel Fortea. I remember thinking to myself,

"Celedonio Romero had been a pupil of Fortea."

I kept doing the math, Tarrega taught Fortea, Fortea taught Celedonia, and Celedonio taught his sons, and one of those sons taught me. It was surreal being able to track my lineage back to this grave that we were visiting, it was a very inspiring moment.

I told Pepe this story, and he agreed that it is absolutely true. He is really deeply connected to this Tarrega tradition. He plays more Tarrega than anybody, it's in virtually every program that he plays, but to get back to the Tarrega Torres guitars, I called Pepe up to invite him to record a few solos on these three guitars. He agreed to do it, but told me that he wasn’t going to play the pieces how he normally would, that he was going to do something different. I asked him what he meant by that, and he said;

“When I was a kid growing up in Spain, I knew many of Tarrega's students."

Pepe Romero playing Fransico Tarrega’s Torres guitar.

He didn't know Tarrega, but he did know many of Tarrega's students; Daniel Fortea, Josefina Robledo, Pujol was around, and he said that he remembers stories that they tell about Tarrega, how they would imitate his playing, play like him, and that's how he was going to play these guitars.

So, we recorded two videos on each guitar where he's playing in this style that he remembers, which is… I thought, this is really a special kind of collaboration, GSI and Pepe, where we're doing something, where we're preserving a piece of history that would otherwise get lost, and this is going to be archived as long as the digital world continues to exist.

Brad: What would be the essence of the Romero style?

David: Playing the guitar, it’s their lifestyle, it's what they do. They get up in the morning and the guitars come right out. If they're sitting around watching TV, they've all got guitars on their laps, they are always touching guitars. Pepe, during his masterclasses, he kind of opens up, he's using this opportunity to talk to the public about the whole purpose of playing music. not just him being concerned with mechanics, but he goes more into the philosophy and tenderness of it all.

He talks about the love of the instrument and of playing music. I read something a while ago, I've never talked to him about it, but I think I read in an old interview, he was talking about how he also, years ago, studied voice. He said that he studied singing because he wanted to know what it was like to make music with the body, without a musical instrument to hide behind. When you have a musical instrument, you have a foreign object that you’re interacting with, you have to hold it, and learn how to operate it. Like with a piano, you're playing keys, and the mechanism is striking strings, they are far away from you, almost like you're on a remote control, but the guitar, it is a little more intimate, you are making the sound with your fingers, not a hammer hitting the keys.

Guitar is a very, very intimate instrument, and Pepe said that he studied voice to learn how to make music with the body, with no object in the middle, and then apply this psychology to the playing of guitar. I remember Celin used to tell me during my lessons that playing guitar should be as natural to you as grabbing a glass of water, it has to become something you don’t have to think about.

The Romeros live this life, they play guitar constantly, and it’s entire saturation. Pepe's house in Granada, it's on one of the mountains there called Sacromonte. His living room has this amazing sort of panoramic view, and when you look out, you see the Alhambra, and at night you sit there and no matter where you're sitting... if you're sitting at the dining table, if you're in the kitchen, you can see the whole Alhambra light up, like one of those postcards.

He specifically wanted to have this place because he is that absorbed, and I don't know how you can immerse yourself more than that. Of course, technically they're the top of the elite level, and that's what a lot of people get excited about, but for them, they gained this at such a young age, it's almost like breathing for them, and it’s now really more about the embracing of the lifestyle.

I remember once down in San Diego; Pepe has a second little place where he keeps a lot of his guitars, the place is filled with guitars, a Baby Grand, and other memorabilia from his career, but I went over there to look at a few instruments, and when I walked in, Lorenzo Palomo, the composer was there working, and this is the kind of life that they live, a total immersion.

Brad: How incredible to be able to live such a life.

David: Yeah, it's very hard to achieve, but they are lovers of music in general. Pepe's knowledge of opera is mind boggling, he could teach a college course on it. Celine told me many times that some of his favorite pieces of music are Bach’s harpsichord concertos. So, they're not just guitar guys, they are lovers of art, music, literature, life, and for me, they are the highest role model.

Brad: In such a fast-paced world, why classical guitar?

David: Precisely, because it is such a fast world. We live in this world where everything that we do has to be instant, updated, and we are always being reminded that newer is better. This latest iPhone is better than the last one which came out twelve months ago, and we're constantly being reminded and bombarded by this, that newer is better.

I think what the classical guitar reminds us, is that, no, hold on, let's go back and review the past. Sometimes older can be better, and what I mean by this, is that guitar making technology hasn't really changed much in 150 years. For example, if you go to Blochinger’s workshop to watch him build a guitar, it's not all that much different from how Torres would've done it 150 years ago.

It's romantic, peaceful, and almost life affirming to go back and see how things used to be done. This fast-paced world kind of misses out, and it is great to be reminded to slow down and take your time.

GSI is a business, we have a lot of things going on, and sometimes I can have a bad day where a million things have been hitting and wearing me out, I might sit down and pick up my guitar, even if to just play around for 20 minutes, I start plunking away, and the next thing you know, two hours have gone by.

Brad: Like that. (Finger snaps)

David: The classical guitar is the perfect reminder that newer isn’t always better, slowing down is important, it is also great for your mental health, keeps the brain sharp, nourishes the soul, and as Celedonio used to say;

“The guitar keeps me young.”

Brad: What is it about the classical guitar that makes it such a standout solo instrument?

David: Well, first of all, it's the most beautiful solo instrument that's ever existed, and I mean that.

Brad: I agree, but don't tell that to a pianist!

David: Well, piano is a good comparison. You can play more complex music on the piano, composers have been writing for keyboard instruments for much longer, and it has been a serious part of the classical tradition for longer than the guitar. The repertoire is richer, and there are more greatest hits of classical music for piano than there are for guitar, but I would say as an instrument, the piano has sort of one sound. There may be some articulation, but you can't hit the key at a slightly different angle to achieve a different tone color like with the guitar.

There is also that cliché which goes back to Beethoven, then to Segovia, where they state that the guitar is like a miniature orchestra. Which it is, you can move your right hand to the bridge and get a brassy ponticello, you can move your hand over the sound hole and get this milky tasto, or you can find many varying degrees in between. You can play pizzicato, and do all these little tricks, harmonics, glissando, and it's a sort of a special effects machine that the piano isn't.

I think that if you start combining instruments you can get more beauty, like a string quartet, an orchestra, or a piano quintet, but as a solo instrument, as a single instrument, the classical guitar does things that no other instrument can do. It has a much wider palette of color, nuance, subtlety, expressiveness, and this is true, the guitar just has more options for sound. Pianos can do really beautiful things, but the guitar has a very special kind of character, it is a uniquely beautiful, sensitive, and poetic instrument.

Brad: What made Torres, Hauser and Bouchet so important for the evolution of the guitar?

David: Well, Jeff Elliot, a guitar maker from Portland answered this question for me once. He told me that early in his career he was trying to find the next great innovation in guitar building, one of those innovations that becomes a standard. In the early 60’s, he was working with Richard Schneider in Detroit, and they were building what are known as Kasha designs. They were using theoretical models, mathematics, being scientific, but he told me that he was never happy with their results.

So, for many years he was trying everything in order to innovate, explored countless avenues, but in the end, he said that the guitars he builds are basically Torres, Hauser, and Bouchet. That these were the elements needed for making a fine guitar, and that he had become a traditionalist, and not by choice.

There are some great books on this subject, and one by Giovanni Accornero where he shows the guitars evolution from Torres on, but he also goes pre Torres, back to like the 15th and 16th centuries. There are a lot of really interesting things, but when you look at the guitars before Torres, you can see that it was the wild west of guitar-making.

These early makers had to invent the wheel from scratch. There wasn’t a formula which was workable for the next guy in history to copy, and when you see the variety of instruments, the shapes of the guitars, the position of the sound holes, the size of the sound holes, the position of the bridge, sometimes they're very close to the bottom, sometimes they're way up near the sound holes, sometimes they're really wide and long and they have these big mustache things, sometimes the boxes are super deep, sometimes they're super shallow, the bracing system's inside, and everybody was just kind of throwing the pasta at the wall to see if it would stick, and nothing really stuck, for centuries. You see these beautifully crafted instruments, but you don’t see a viable instrument that's concert-worthy, let's say, of Carnegie Hall, it's just these beautifully made antique-looking things.

So, Torres is the first guy to come along and build a guitar that truly worked. His guitar projects, it has the power, it has the subtlety, has all the colors that we talk about which make the guitar beautiful, and if you play a real Torres now, it sounds like a modern guitar, not like an old ancient thing.

David Collett with three guitars made by Antonio de Torres, and owned by Francisco Tarrega.

When this finally happened, there was a preparedness from the playing community to run with it, and you had players like Arcas in the beginning, of course Tarrega and his whole school, and the Torres Guitar just blasted off.

Once these players had an instrument that they could take on the concert circuits, it happened, it was inevitable, but I mean, Segovia is credited with kind of universalizing it, but it was already starting to happen before him.

Torres designed and developed a guitar that... and this is what is interesting, when you look at these books and see all of the guitars that are built after him, including Hauser, including Bouchet, they all look like a Torres. They are 95% percent Torres, and the remainder 5% are subtle differences in proportions, doming, or there's a minor modification, but for the most part, even if you look at a radical guitar now, like a Dammann or a Smallman, or with portholes and what have you, they are still 95% Torres.

Compare those to these pre-Torres guitars, and they are nothing alike, but if you look at a Humphrey, it's a modified Torres. That's why Torres is so important, because he laid this foundation, and centuries later people are still trying to modify it, but it just seems like he found that sweet spot.

Hauser comes along later, and he came from a very different tradition. He was building these sorts of Viennese-style instruments; zithers, lyres, lutes, and all kinds. I've seen these double-headed lyre things that he was building, and there's a very long tradition here, but when he saw a Torres, these two worlds came into collision. My analysis is that Hauser saw Torres as a bit wild, he came from this mysterious place in Spain, and he knew that the instrument of choice of the aristocracy, let's say, was the piano, and that every household, every proper household had a piano.

Hauser wanted to take this Torres, take this wild instrument, that has all this potential, it does all these amazing things, and wanted to… put it in a tuxedo and make it presentable to an aristocratic sort of audience. He wanted to put it up there with the piano, so that every sort of sophisticated household had a guitar, and I think his goal was to kind of refine and slightly modify the Torres.

Hauser made a few adjustments to the basic Torres design, thickened the top, a little bit less doming, and as a result he was able to create this very balanced, clean, and clear sound where the notes are separated like a piano. Hauser was coming from this tradition of Viennese instruments, kind of plucky and steel string-sound, and he was able to combine these qualities with those of the Spanish model guitar, which resulted in a guitar with this piano-like quality.

I think what Bouchet helped to contribute came in his later guitars. In fact, his guitars number one through 21 are built just like a Torres, and we call this his first period. His second period, which was guitars number 22 through 56, had thicker tops, a little bit less doming, and he was sort of experimenting with the Hauser style, I think. With guitar number 55, he introduced that brace which goes underneath, but it was still a seven-fan system, like all of his previous guitars. So, it wasn't really until number 56, where he dropped two of the bars and went with his famous five-fan system, plus the bar that goes under the bridge. This bar under the bridge allows you to do lighter bracing without any structural issues, you can lose a couple of braces and not worry about the top collapsing, you can keep all the doming, and go back to slightly thinner tops.

The bridge sitting on this brace acts a bit like a seesaw which makes the top become a little more flexible, this improves the dynamic range, and tonal variety. This really caught on in France, especially, and Bouchet was friends with Antonio Marin, and even in Spain now too. If you go to Granada, Marin has adopted this system, and many of the guitar-makers that he's taught in Granada have adopted the Bouchet system as well.

I would also add Jose Ramirez III to this list, he really is the one who popularized cedar tops. In the mid-1960s, he was the first maker to start producing large numbers of cedar tops, and he introduced the world to yet another flavor. He was also doing things with double sides, which allowed players to play in bigger venues. Double sides help to push the sound out of the guitar, you're not losing vibration, and they are tight like a drum shell which forces the top to do all the work. This is exactly why Segovia was playing a Ramirez later on, because it was a functioning instrument for a bigger venue, really pushing the sound out further into the audience. So, I would include Ramirez also in this list.

Ramirez didn't invent the use of cedar, we just discovered last year that there were cedar tops being made in Italy in the early '50s, and Ramirez probably knew of these guitars, but he didn’t invent the use of cedar, he popularized it, he figured it out, he nuanced it, and he made it acceptable.

Brad: If you could only have one, spruce or cedar?

David: Well, I own eight guitars, personally, at home, and four are spruce, and four are Cedar. I obviously like them both, I mean, they do different things, but If I have to pick one... I would probably pick an older guitar with a spruce top, one that's been really played in.

One of the things that was first appealing about cedar, was that it gave players the impression that they were playing a guitar that was loose and played in, like an old spruce top. A brand-new spruce top, it takes a little bit of work to loosen it up. Spruce, it's a denser wood, so it takes longer to break in. So, a lot of spruce guitars feel a little tight when they're new, and players feel like they have to really dig in and play them in order to loosen them up. The appeal of cedar was that it's already loose, and that's one of the original attractions, I think. So, if you can get an older, played in spruce guitar, you're getting the best of both worlds.

Brad: How long would you say it takes for a guitar to open up?

David: Depends on the guitar, and it depends on how much it's played. If you take the extreme, a brand-new Hauser, you really have to dig in and play those guitars hard, but once it starts to break in, you have all of this color, nuance, and variety. Julian Bream is the perfect example, he was playing a Hauser, and he is famous for having a large pallet of color. So, it's not an accident that he was attracted to this kind of guitar, but it does take a lot of playing for the guitar to open up.

A lot of people with Cedar tops have told me that their guitars changed a little bit in the first few months, but after that they just sort of settled.

Spruce tops, they can continue to open up and develop for years depending on how thick the top is. There is a French Luthier, Dominique Field, and his tops are very thin, and his spruce tops, even when they're brand new, they sound loose. I don't know what he's doing, and don't know the exact thickness, or how he's doming it, but he's got it set up in such a way that it's like, if this thing doesn't loosen up anymore, I'm fine with that, this sounds amazing as it is.

So, all guitars age at a different rate. In fact, we even used to sell this object, it was called ToneRite, and it was basically this little machine that you attach to the bridge, plug it into the wall, and it vibrates while you leave it on overnight. We still have one, and when we get a new guitar in that is a little tight, we'll throw this thing on and leave it on for a weekend, just to loosen it up a bit.

Brad: And that works?

David: Yeah. It really does help, just getting the top moving a bit. José Ramirez III wrote a book; Things About the Guitar, and he talks about what a top is, a soundboard, and he said that if you look at it, you see all these grains, right in the top, what those grains are, they are crystallized resin, and if you know what crystal molecules do, crystal molecules vibrate. If one of them is vibrating, and it's touching another one, it wants to vibrate as well. So, you get this sort of domino effect, and as you break a top in and loosen up the resin in the grain, he said, that those grain patterns end up working like strings. They vibrate like strings, this is a beautiful analogy, to get the top moving so that those grain patterns behave like strings, and the vibration is sent up and down the entire top along the grain patterns, but this process takes time, and especially in Spruce since there's more resin than in Cedar, and that's why it takes a bit longer.

Brad: Do guitars retain memories?

David: Oh yeah, they do. Sure, they do. Going back to the Romero's, Pepe says when you play an old guitar, that you're not just playing the guitar, but you're also hearing the sound of the other people who played it before you. For example, Angel and Pepe have a guitar built by the same maker, and Angel is a more aggressive player, he likes to play close to the bridge, gets a brighter sound, and he really digs in with his nails, and because he broke in these frequencies, his guitar has a brighter sound than Pepe’s, who tends to play a little milkier and tasto. So, who is playing the guitar has a lot to do with the sound of the guitar.

Another interesting experience that really blew our minds, and this is where I really thought about this, but we bought the Russell Cleveland Collection a few years ago, it was a pretty famous book, so, it was kind of a known collection. In this collection, there is a 1969 Ramirez that had been owned by Segovia for 11 years, and when we got the guitar here, I went through all the documentation, and there was this letter from Ramirez, it said that Segovia received the guitar in 1969, gave it back to Ramirez in 1980, and Ramirez said that when they got it back, they had to refinish the back of the neck. I thought that this was incredible because Ramirez used a resin finish, which is so durable, it is like concrete. Segovia must have played the heck out of this thing if Ramirez needed to refinish it. We found videos on YouTube of Segovia playing this guitar, and apparently this is one of his favorite Ramirez, and everybody who has played it, has been in awe of how this guitar sounds. Scott Tennant came over and played it and said that it is the best guitar that he’s ever played, and he ended up recording an album with it too.

We have thought a lot about it, and our working hypothesis is that... Segovia was famous for his sound; people went to see him in concert because they wanted to hear his sound. He had a very particular touch and a way of producing sound, and if he really played this guitar so much, it has his sound in it. He was the one that broke the guitar in to the frequencies of his sound, the frequencies that he produced naturally with his technique, with his angle of attack, with his nail to flesh ratio, and all of those elements which make the Segovia sound… this was a great guitar when it was made, but it's now been changed because of the way Segovia played it, the memory of his sound is in this guitar.

Brad: Julian Bream passed away not that long ago, do you have a Bream story?

David: I did meet him once, and I saw him in concert a few times, and there is one experience in particular which stands out. I was at one of his concerts where he was playing on a 1940 Hauser, I was in the back row, and when he came out... this made a really big impression on me, it taught me the difference between volume and projection. Some people want loud guitars, and when you play on a Hauser, it's not that loud, the volume is okay, there is plenty of it, but it's not one of these really super powerful, crazy loud guitars.

When Bream walked out on stage carrying the Hauser, which was Rose Augustine’s, he was talking to the audience before he started to play, and when you speak publicly, you're trying to broadcast your voice, you're almost yelling, but not quite, he was doing this, and I remember from the back, I just heard this muffle, and I could barely make out what he was saying, and I was worried for a moment because he was playing on this old Hauser, he's practically yelling, and if I can barely hear him, I'm not going to be able to hear the guitar.

When he sat down and started to play, I was shocked. I was able to hear everything, his nail noise, fret noise, everything was crystal clear. After the concert I had a drink with Liam Romanillos, he had been sitting close, the first few rows. I told him about how I couldn't hear him talking, but the guitar was really clear. He told me that this guitar isn’t particularly loud, and that I was probably hearing 85-90% of what he was hearing in the first few rows, but that these Hauser guitars project. The sound, it comes out of the guitar like a bullet almost, and it travels, and it doesn't really evaporate as it moves. This is my memorable Bream story, and a great lesson for me about guitars.

Brad: Okay, something a little different, give me two words to describe the following.

David: Two words, that's a challenge!

Brad: Yeah, try to keep it to two or three words to describe, Torres?

David: Two words, huh? I would say... Elegant, beautiful, and if I get one more word, I'd say timeless.

Brad: Hauser?

David: Refined, aristocratic, noble.

Brad: Kenny Hill?

David: Personality, character. The reason I say that is because, we just had him on our site, Kenny Hill plays the music of Kenny Hill on a Kenny Hill. So, my two or three words, I'd say personality, character, individuality. Kenny thinks very individually. He's willing to mix and match anything, he's got this super open mindedness.

Brad: Since I am in Chicago, Richard Brune?

David: I am not as familiar with his guitars. We've had, I think two of them here. Richard, I would say is kind of scholarly, he's got the reputation of being an academic, historian, and I'm sure that informs his guitars.

Brad: Masaki Sakurai?

David: I would say disciplined, consistent, and very robust.

Brad: Robert Bouchet?

David: Wholesome, and creamy.

Brad: An up and comer, Michael Cadiz?

David: Michael Cadiz, I knew Michael when he was just getting started, he came up here and we were looking at old guitars, and he was really into the Torres. He was extremely curious, quick, and absorbed in what he was hearing, and he also played too.

Brad: Great player.

David: Yeah. So, he was just kind of like taking it in, wholesale. We looked at a lot of guitars, and he was just sucking it up like a sponge. So, I would say absorbative.

Brad: Marc Teicholz?

David: Curious, prolific, and he plays more stuff than anyone I know, and a lot of his own arrangements too.

Brad: Mauro Giuliani and Fernando Sor?

David: Giuliani, right hand, and Sor, left hand.

Brad: Is there anything that you would like to mention about the GSI or the GSI Foundation?

David: What we are trying to do here, quickly, and not take too long, but we want to be a one stop hub for all things classical guitar. The Foundation, for example, assists public schools with funding for music education. Not guitar education, but music education in general, because music, we don't just necessarily want young kids to be guitarists, we want them to be the musicians of their own choice. So, we have the foundation, we have our store where you can buy accessories, guitar, and all that important stuff.

We also want to be a place that promotes culture with all these extra projects, I told you about a few of them with the Romeros, for example, where we had Tarrega's guitars. We are hosting concerts, masterclasses, we produce videos and release one video a day of top performers, and up and coming younger talent. We have had Pepe Romero, Marc Teicholz, Roland Dyens, Adam Holzman, and many other favorite guitarists come in and record videos for us.

Currently we are in the process of developing a teaching platform, and have quite a few other things in the pipeline. GSI wants to promote culture, and be the premiere destination for anybody who wants to participate in any way with classical guitar.

Brad Conroy

David Collett - Surrounded by Guitars