It's Time To Play Christmas Carols - Happy Holidays from GSI and Friends!

The Holiday Season is here! On behalf of the staff at GSI, we'd like to wish you a Happy Holidays! We hope that all of you can spend these upcoming holidays with your loved ones, good food, and some great music - performed on guitars of course!

On the occasion of this holiday season, we'd like to share with you some great recordings by some of our good friends whom you most likely already know from our YouTube channel.

Eva Beneke - In Dulci Jubilo, A Classical Guitar Christmas

First, we would like to start not just with one record, but with the entire album that Eva Beneke and Scott Tennant recorded at GSI! Of course, Eva chose a fantastic instrument at GSI for this album - a 1952 Hermann Hauser I SP/CSAR. If you are looking for a gift idea for a classical guitar lover, this album is available in our store (buy this album here).

Miroslav Tadić & Yvette Holzwarth

Last year, just before Christmas Eve, we published an excellent recording by Miroslav Tadić and Yvette Holzwarth. In the video, you can hear Miroslav's arrangements of 6 movements from Béla Bartók's “Romanian Christmas Carols". The guitar featured in the video is a 1978 Miguel Rodriguez RW/HR.

Andrew York

The next two videos that we'd like to share were not recorded in our showroom, but they feature excellent recordings by our good friend, Andrew York! In the first video, you'll hear Andrew's version of "O Tannenbaum" ("O Christmas Tree") recorded on his Ignacio Fleta guitar. The second video was published very recently. It's Andrew's composition "Cryptic Triptych" which is a jazzy re-composition of "We Three Kings" in extreme augmentation. The film noir style of the video perfectly matches this beautiful composition.

Scott Tennant & William Kanengiser

Last year, we had the pleasure of recording "Silent Night" performed by Grammy-award winners Scott Tennant and William Kanengiser on two historically significant guitars! We reunited Bill with a guitar on which he recorded a few other GSI videos - an 1864 Antonio de Torres “FE 17” SP/MP previously owned by Francisco Tarrega! Scott picked the perfect guitar to match it! He chose Ignacio Fleta’s structural copy from 1936 of the same FE 17 Torres guitar. "Silent Night" was written by Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863) and arranged for guitar by Mark Small. This arrangement was also featured on the "Il Dulci Jubilo" album mentioned above. Mark has recently published a book with his arrangements of Christmas music. It's available for purchase online at Production d'OZ.

Irina Kulikova

Irina recorded some excellent arrangements of Christmas Carols as well. Last year, we released her performances of Konstantin Vassiliev's arrangements of "O Tannenbaum" ("O Christmas Tree") by Ernst Anschütz and Melchior Franck recorded on a 2021 Paula Lazzarini "Granada winner" CD/IN, and "The First Noel" played on a 2022 Francois Leonard SP/AR. Irina also recorded a video of the famous "Jingle Bells" by James Lord Pierpont (1822-1893) in an arrangement by José María Gallardo Del Rey. In this video, Irina plays on a 2022 Otto Vowinkel SP/CSAR guitar.

Taro Wayama

Japanese-born classical guitarist and composer, Taro Wayama recorded in our showroom his arrangement of "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin. In this video, Taro is playing on a 2012 Arturo Sanzano "Concierto" SP/IN guitar.