2025 Brian Itzkin No. 49 SP/IN

This 2025 Brian Itzkin No. 49 is a classical guitar with a bearclaw European spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides, made in New York in the Torres tradition.

Our First Guitar from Brian Itzkin

Well, it’s finally here: our long-awaited guitar from Brian, who we feel is currently the number-one young/up-and-coming US luthier. Hands-down. To us, this is everything anyone could want in a guitar – the power, the weight, the playability, the visuals and, most importantly, the sound. Although a “modern” guitar, it captures the qualities of the old Spanish guitars that players, audiences and general music lovers have so loved and cherished over the last 150 years.

Sound

Brian’s deep passion and love of the tradition – especially his hero Antonio de Torres – have been harnessed and focused into the build of this instrument. It is so refreshing to see how his enthusiasm and understanding of the craft have been captured here – astonishing, especially since he’s not even 30 years old yet! The guitar has a dark, deep, old-world sound with rich harmonic content filling every note, yet without distorting or muddying the fundamental, partially also thanks to the low body resonance. The result is a clear, focused but rich and beautiful sound with a noticeably wide tonal palette of colors – the proverbial “symphony in a box”. Simply put, this guitar really has everything any sensitive guitarist could want to fully express any musical idea in any of the guitar’s repertoire.

1950s Indian Rosewood and “Bearclaw” Spruce

The guitar is as beautiful in appearance as in sound. Brian’s materials are incredible – including back and sides of old, very colorful and dramatic Indian rosewood originally imported to the US in the early 1950s (according to the import sticker still on one of the boards before Brian milled it). A friend of Brian’s salvaged this precious material from an archery bow manufacturer in Queens, NYC, when the shop closed in the early 1980s. The top is highly marbled “bearclaw” European spruce; Brian’s source for this wood claims to have purchased it from Manuel Velázquez.

Bracing after Torres and Romanillos

Structurally, Brian worked with the general ideas of Torres and José Romanillos, using a 7-fan system with thin and tall braces, fairly thin sides, and a thicker back thinned at the waist, much like Torres. All the ebony parts (head veneer, fretboard and binding) are old Malagasy ebony, the blackest variety and now commercially extinct.

A Rosette Inspired by Torres FE-17

The central theme of the rosette is inspired by Torres FE-17, and the rust-colored details in the rosette and in the top, back and side purfling are Cuban mahogany that Brian milled from an early 19th-century table in poor condition. Overall this is a beautifully made guitar, and although new, it sounded incredible straight out of the case – and will only improve with continued playing. We are very happy to be working with this fine maker and look forward to many more!

Photos of this guitar taken during and after construction.

A Classical Guitarist from Long Island

Brian Itzkin was born in 1996 just outside of New York City, on the north shore of Long Island. He began guitar lessons at the local music store at age 8, originally wanting to learn his favorite rock and roll riffs, but found himself with a classical teacher who was at the time a DMA candidate at Stony Brook University. Brian remained with this teacher for 10 years, learning to read music and play in the classical style. His childhood teacher, Jason Priset, is now the director of the Lute Society of America’s “Lute Fest” and an adjunct professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Brian has recently been working on his playing again and is doing quite well.

First Guitars and Ervin Somogyi

His introduction to guitar making came when he built his first guitar at the age of 13 from a C.F. Martin kit in his father’s poorly equipped basement workshop. Brian says that it was somewhat playable, but it inspired him to build another. After that second guitar, Brian began a correspondence with the highly regarded steel-string maker Ervin Somogyi, which lasted from the ages of 14 to 18. During this time Somogyi sent Brian assignments by mail and email, and the two met yearly at the Woodstock Invitational Luthier Showcase. Their correspondence focused on guitar design, and although Somogyi is a steel-string maker, the ideas he taught and shared with Brian were a major catalyst for Brian’s switch to classical guitars.

Training in Spain with Stephen Hill

At 20 years old, in 2016, Brian took a “semester” off from college after his sophomore year to attend Stephen Hill’s guitar making course in Spain. This proved to be a revelatory experience, and Brian decided to postpone his university studies in favor of studying guitar making. The following year he spent 3 months studying with Daniele Chiesa in the south of Spain and further immersed himself in the Granada guitar making tradition. Back at home, from the end of 2017 until the first months of 2020, he equipped his workshop, collected materials and independently studied the life and work of makers like Antonio de Torres (his chief influence – those of you familiar with Brian will know that he even has a Torres headstock design tattooed on his forearm!), Robert Bouchet, Santos Hernández and Hermann Hauser, before returning to Stephen’s shop in March 2020.

The Granada Tradition

Brian stayed in Spain throughout the Covid lockdown until early September, and in that time built and sold 3 guitars. He learned enormously from this opportunity to spend so much extra time with Stephen, Evan Kingma and Alessandro Perciaccante, who at that time was taking over the role of Stephen’s apprentice as Evan prepared to return to Canada. Brian has since returned to Spain for at least 3 months every year, and has befriended and (in a very informal sense) learned more about the Granada tradition from Rafael Moreno Rodríguez, the varnisher Javier Campos and many others. He also assisted Stephen Hill in teaching his guitar making course in 2022 and in May 2025.

Recognition

Brian has been featured in an article in Acoustic Guitar magazine, and in videos by Brandon Acker after building him an homage to Torres’ FE-13. He also built the first-prize guitar for the High School Classical Guitar Competition held in association with the Long Island Guitar Festival. GSI is proud to be Brian’s only dealer in the USA.