Thursday, October 6, 2022, at 7:00 PM
Online Zoom meeting — click here to join
The European Guitar Prior to Torres
Join us for a talk by Dr. James Westbrook of The Guitar Museum, Brighton, former Senior Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge
The presentation will be followed by our Open Mic. Sign up in advance to play — see the Member Events page for details. NYCCGS Member Events are free and open to all members and first-time guests.
James Westbrook is a British-based guitar historian whose particular interest is the development of guitar construction. In 2010 he was the recipient of the O’May studentship at the University of Cambridge, leading to the award of a PhD in 2013. From 2013–16 he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has been the recipient of the American Musical Instrument Society’s Publication Grant, and the Terence Pamplin Award for Organology by The Musicians’ (Livery) Company, London. He was subsequently appointed Affiliated Research Scholar at The Music Faculty, Cambridge, and a Senior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
He has been published in Early Music, Soundboard Journal, Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society and American Lutherie. He is a contributing author in Inventing the American Guitar: The Pre-Civil War Innovations of C. F. Martin and his Contemporaries (2013), and in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music (2018). He is the author of three popular books: Guitars Through the Ages (2002), The Century that Shaped the Guitar (2006) and An Illustrated History and Directory of Acoustic Guitars (2015).
Currently he is a consultant for Brompton’s, a London auction house specialising in musical instruments, and also works as a luthier and restorer.
