2026 promises to be a year of studio recordings for me. With my duo FRIEND N FELLOW, I'll be recording our new (13th) CD in the spring, another and final album of cover versions. The CD and vinyl will be released in October, which is also when our album tour will begin. Furthermore, I am incredibly grateful and very excited because several world-class guitarists want to record some of my compositions on CD. Many of these will be musical premieres. The anticipation is building... more details to follow soon.
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Last year, I had the opportunity to discover a lot of "unexplored" territory.
In ARMENIA, a country I visited for the very first time, I gave a masterclass in addition to performing a concert with other artists. There I experienced a culture that captivated me from the very first moment. I owe this wonderful encounter to the PRIMAVERA FOUNDATION and Valeria Galimova.
With my duo HANDS ON STRINGS, we embarked on our first joint CHINA tour (with concerts, among others, at Beijing University, Blue Note Beijing, and Blue Note Shanghai), organized and lovingly taken care of by FINGERSTYLE CHINA. I must not forget the culinary highs of these two trips either. For the food alone, the journey would have been worth it.
All in all, I traveled to eight countries for work, and a ninth planned trip (to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama) unfortunately ended rather dramatically in a hotel at Schiphol Airport!
There are, of course, so many guitar festivals. In 2025, I had the pleasure of getting to know not only LiGiTa (Liechtenstein) but also the legendary Petrer (Spain), and of meeting many old and new friends (in both places). Denmark, France, and the Czech Republic were also on the menu.
I went to the festival in Koblenz (because it’s nice to travel at home too) without a guitar — but returned with one!
There I had the privilege of listening to the two giants Aniello Desiderio and Zoran Dukic as they premiered my trilogy THREE FABULOUS DUOS (somehow I was more nervous for this concert than when I play myself).
Also, I fell in love with a DANIEL STARK master guitar, my new instrument for the quartet and for romantic hours of practicing alone … and beyond (see Equipment).
But really, every concert is a new frontier anyway. And in the words of great East German singer-songwriter Holger Biege, "every day is a foreign landscape".