Recording Artist: Marcelo Kayath

Marcelo Kayath has had a pretty interesting career as a musician and investment banker. In 1984, he won first prize in the two biggest guitar competitions in the same year: the 4th Toronto International Guitar Competition and the XXVI Paris Councours International de Guitare. In the following year, he embarked on tours of Europe and the USA to unanimous critical acclaim, and he recorded many CDs for several labels, including Hyperion, MCA Classics and Pickwick. Kayath retired from the guitar in the early 1990’s and pursued a completely different career as a banker. Now he is back with his first recording in 25 years and proves that he is still a force to be reckoned with.

In 1988, Kayath decided to try something new and used his engineering degree to get a job with a mining company, where he worked for four years, during which time he managed to record two albums. In 1992, he went to Stanford to get his MBA and, after graduating, became an investment banker, eventually becoming co-CEO of Credit Suisse Investment Banking in Brazil, a $1 billion business.

Now Marcelo is planing to spend more time with the guitar again, though perhaps not as a full-time career. He is beginning to release some videos from the ’80’s on his YouTube channel, 11MKForever (apparently his daughter started the channel).

Marcelo has some pretty strong opinions about the state of the classical guitar world, he has voiced in his article ‘Reflections On The Guitar’, so it should be interesting to see what he does now that he turns his attention back to the guitar. In the meantime, here are some of the videos from his YouTube channel, as well as a promo video for his latest project in 2016 – a brand new CD titled Suites and Sonatas.

For those interested in learning from this virtuoso online, Marcelo also has some videos of a masterclass he held in Sao Paolo – they’re in Portuguese, but he tells us they will be subtitled some time soon.

Suites & Sonatas by Marcelo Kayath

In 2016, Marcelo Kayath is considered to have been a rising star in the classical guitar world in the 1980’s. Now, his return marks a very special occasion for the classical guitar world as he has released his first CD recording in 25 years.

The new CD, Suites & Sonatas, is published by Guitar CoOp, which Kayath helped found, and features suites by Bach and Weiss and Sonatas by Sor and Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Check out the video below for a sample of Kayath playing Bach.