For various practical reasons the Consortium is not open for new members at the moment.

ORDINARY MEMBERS

Jelma van Amersfoort (Netherlands). Jelma van Amersfoort is a musicologist and a performer on lutes and early guitars. She studied guitar and lute at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (UK), and musicology at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include 18th- and 19th-century guitar-accompanied song, 19th century women composers (particularly Pauline Duchambge (1776-1858)), and the performance practice of early guitars. Jelma published in Early Music and TVNM, is a researcher at the University of Southampton (UK), and works as a data analyst and programmer. See her website.

Luis Briso de Montiano (Spain). Luis Briso de Montiano studied classical guitar at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música in Madrid, where he obtained his degree. He has been teaching in this institution and in other conservatories for more than three decades. In the field of musicology, his book Un Fondo desconocido de Música para guitarra. Música española y francesa para guitarra (c. 1790 – c. 1808) en la Biblioteca Histórica Municipal de Madrid (Ópera Tres, 1995) was the first sign of his interest in the Spanish guitar music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

 † Andrew Britton (UK). Andrew Britton worked initially as a language teacher and translator and held various positions within Bristol’s library and museum services.  During his early years, he played both electric and acoustic guitar, but in 1974 abandoned them in favour of the classical instrument, studying first with Audrey Byard at Bristol Spanish Guitar Centre, and subsequently with John Edwards, John Mills, Duncan James and Stephen Gordon.  He taught the guitar privately and at Bath Spa and Bristol Universities for several years.  At the same time, he performed in solo, chamber and concerto concerts throughout South West England, and participated in the master classes of Roberto Aussel, Eliot Fisk, Carlos Bonell, Jonathan Leathwood and others. Around 1995 he developed an interest in historical guitars and period performance and studied the nineteenth-century guitar and its repertoire with Tom Kerstens in Bath. From 2006 he was actively involved in CHOMBEC (Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth), based at the University of Bristol. He is the author of several local history studies and The guitar in the romantic period: its musical and social development, with special reference to Bristol and Bath (PhD diss., Royal Holloway College, University of London, 2010).

Jan van Cappelle (Netherlands) studied guitar and lute making at the International Lutherie School of Antwerp (ILSA) in Belgium (2005-2008), He has worked as a luthier ever since, making and restoring guitars and lutes of a wide variety of ages. Jan teaches a guitar making course at Dutch Bouwerskontakt.

As an independent researcher and lecturer Jan studies historical instruments, wood- and metalworking techniques, tools, workshops, and instruments. This has resulted in detailed technical drawings for a wide range of historic instruments from Anglo Saxon and Germanic lyres, to baroque guitars and 1960s Danelectros. His investigations after the guitar making methods of Antonio Stradivari led to the publication of the article ‘Antonio Stradivari: guitarmaker’ in American Lutherie in 2015. He published ‘Making Masonite Guitars’ in 2015. In 2018 and 2019 he collaborated with Jelma van Amersfoort on the reconstruction of a 1760 five course guitar by Gosewyn Spyker of Amsterdam. Other interests include Living History events and Experimental Archaeology, early medieval string instruments like the Anglo Saxon and Germanic Lyre, and the Carolingian Cythara from the Utrecht and Stuttgart psalters. In his work Jan tries to make a synthesis between history, technology, arts, head, and hands. Website: https://thedutchluthier.wordpress.com

Sarah Clarke (UK).  Sarah Clarke’s research interests focus on the guitar in nineteenth-century England.  In 2018 she was awarded the Andrew Britton Fellowship by the Consortium for Guitar Research and in 2021 completed her PhD at the Open University with her thesis ‘An Instrument in Comparative Oblivion? Women and the Guitar in Victorian London’.  Since then she has contributed chapters to The Great Vogue for the Guitar in Western Europe 1800-1840 ed. by Christopher Page, Paul Sparks, and James Westbrook (Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming) and The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: the `Nineteenth Century and Beyond ed. by Laura Hamer and Helen Julia Minors (Routledge, forthcoming).  She is currently working on a book about the varied career of Ferdinand Pelzer (1801-1864).

Nicoletta Confalone (Italy). Nicoletta Confalone completed her musical studies at the Conservatorio Francesco Venezze in Rovigo, where she graduated in guitar. She obtained degrees in Law at Ferrara University and in Musicology at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, both cum laude, and was awarded the honorary prize Chitarra d’Oro for her research at the 2014 Alessandria International Guitar Meeting. She has played a prominent role in the revival of the guitarist-composer Emilia Giuliani, publishing in 2013 the first complete edition of her guitar works; her book Un angelo senza paradiso – La chitarra alla ricerca di Schubert, appeared in 2017. Her articles have been published in Il Fronimo and Soundboard Scholar, among other journals. Nicoletta Confalone is the only Italian member of the Consortium for Guitar Research at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, is Corresponding Member of the ancient Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo and is Vice President of Associazione Musicale F. Venezze in Rovigo.

Damián Martín Gil (Spain). Damián Martín earned a Diploma in Classical Guitar (2002), B.S. in Physical Education (2002), M.Mus. in Classical Guitar Performance (2008) and M.Mus. in Historical Musicology (2020). He has obtained grants from relevant institutions such as Fundación Antonio Gala (Spain) and The Research Council of Norway. His articles have been published in several of the most outstanding journals specialized in classical guitar such as Il Fronimo (Italy) and Soundboard Scholar (USA) and he has presented papers at various international conferences around Europe. Among other recognitions he has been awarded with the 2020 Andrew Britton Fellowship at The Consortium for Guitar Research (Cambridge, UK). His main field of interest is the guitar in Paris between 1750 and 1810 focusing nowadays his attention in a Ph.D. at the University of Poitiers (France). He holds a permanent position as a classical guitar teacher at the Conservatory of Cáceres (Spain) since 2010. Profile in researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Damian_Gil4

Samantha Muir (UK) was born in England but grew up in Australia where she initially studied classical guitar with Sebastian Jorgensen. Having received a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English Literature from the University of Sydney, Australia, Samantha was accepted into Royal College of Music, London. On completing a Post-Graduate Diploma in Performance Studies she was awarded the Madeline Walton Guitar Prize. After many years of teaching and playing the guitar Samantha developed an interest in the ukulele. She is currently finishing a practice-based PhD at the University of Surrey. The title of her PhD is New Works for Classical Ukulele. Her research explores the historic relationship between the machete de braga and rajão from Madeira with the ukulele, and seeks to extend the boundaries of the ukulele by creating new and innovative repertoire. Her new works for ukulele are published by Les Productions d’Oz. See her websites for more information. Websites: http://www.samanthamuir.com and https://iloveclassicalukulele.com.

Christopher Page (UK). Christopher Page is a Fellow of the British Academy, Professor of Medieval Music and Literature in the University of Cambridge and from October 2014 Gresham Professor of Music at Gresham College, London (founded 1597) for three years, replacing Christopher Hogwood. A Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, He holds the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association awarded for outstanding services to musicology. In 1981 he founded the professional vocal ensemble Gothic voices now with twenty-five CDs in the catalogue, three of which won the coveted Gramophone Early Music Record of the Year award. He has published numerous books and articles on medieval music, most recently his 350,000 word study, The Christian West and its Singers: The First Thousand Years, published by Yale University Press in 2010. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Early Music (OUP) and Plainsong and Medieval Music (CUP). Christopher Page was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2008. See his personal page.

Gerhard Penn (Austria/Switzerland). Gerhard Penn was born in Graz, Austria where he obtained a PhD in chemistry in 1984. After post-graduate studies he moved to Basel, Switzerland, where he is working as a chemist. He started playing the guitar in 1972 and is mainly self-taught. Since 2003 Gerhard has been researching the history of the guitar in the 19^th century, particularly in Vienna. This has resulted in the discovery of numerous new documents which shed new light on the career of Mauro Giuliani in Vienna. Other guitarists and composers Gerhard is currently investigating are Louis Wolf, Matteo Bevilacqua and Franz Tandler. Gerhard’s archival work has brought back to light lost or forgotten compositions by François de Fossa, Wenzeslaus Matiegka and Ferdinand Rebay which are now published in modern editions and recorded by leading guitarists. In 2007 Gerhard Penn founded together with Andreas Stevens the biannual Lake Konstanz Guitar Research Meeting with the objective to bring together guitar researchers from all over the world in a dedicated conference. For his research work Gerhard received the Chitarra d’oro award at the 2015 Alessandria International Guitar Competition in Italy.

Panagiotis Poulopoulos (Greece/Germany). Panagiotis Poulopoulos is Assistant Curator in the Department of Musical Instruments at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. His diverse academic background comprises a BA in Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Arts, a MMus in Musical Instrument Research, and a PhD in Organology from the University of Edinburgh for his thesis ‘The Guittar in the British Isles, 1750-1810’. Moreover, he has extensive training and experience in the documentation, preservation and exhibition of musical instruments having worked for various projects in the National Museums Scotland and the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments. Apart from his museum activities, he has been tutor for ‘Music and Technologies’ at the University of Edinburgh and ‘Scholar-in-Residence’ at the Forschungsinstitut für Technik- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte of the Deutsches Museum. Additionally, he is the recipient of various scholarships, awards and research grants, and has regularly presented papers at international conferences organised by the Galpin Society, AMIS, CIMCIM, and other acknowledged institutions. He is also the author of several articles as well as contributor to the ‘New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments’. Link to museum profile.

Jukka Savijoki (Finland) studied the guitar at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He has performed across Europe, in Japan and both North and South America. Apart from solo work, important musical collaborations have included those with the flautist Mikael Helasvuo and the English tenor Ian Partridge. His commercial recordings comprise a wide-range of repertoire from Baroque music to contemporary works, many of which have received high critical acclaim. As well as for the Finnish Broadcasting Company, Savijoki has recorded for many European radio stations, most notably the BBC. Several Finnish and foreign composers have written works for him and for ensembles in which he plays. In 1983 Savijoki was appointed Head of Guitar Studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, a position from which he retired in 2016. In 1997 he graduated as a Doctor of Music and has published a book on the guitar works of the Viennese composer Anton Diabelli; a book on Finnish guitar history is in press. Savijoki has served on the juries of a number of guitar competitions and taught master-classes at a range of music academies around the world. As of 2016 he is a member of the advisory board of the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. Savijoki has been awarded the honour of Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the Finnish president.

Richard Savino (USA). Guitarist/lutenist Richard Savino has been a featured performer throughout the US and abroad. His sponsors include the Frick Collection, Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY), Boston Early Music Festival International Series, Tage Alter Musik, Regensburg, London Early Music Network, Shrine To Music Museum, San Francisco/Seattle/ Vancouver/Victoria Early Music Societies, the Portland and Los Angeles Baroque Orchestras, the International Guitar Festival in Gargnano, Italy, the Guitar Foundation of America Festival and the National Guitar Summer Workshop. He has been Visiting Artistic Director of the Aston Magna Academy and Music Festival (1993, 1995, 2005, 2009), the Connecticut Early Music Festival (2002), and from 1994 – 1997 was Coordinator of Performance Practice at the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire. See his website.

Paul Sparks (UK). Paul Sparks studied music at the University of Sussex, mandolin with Hugo d’Alton, and lute with Robert Spencer. During the 1980s, he worked as a mandolinist and guitarist with various British orchestras, gave several recitals of mandolin and guitar music on BBC Radio 3, and completed his PhD thesis – A History of the Neapolitan Mandoline from its Origins until the early Nineteenth Century (City University, 1989). He has written three books for Oxford University Press – The Early Mandolin (1989, with James Tyler), The Classical Mandolin (1995), and The Guitar and its Music (2002, with Tyler) – and has been a writer and/or production executive for numerous BBC television music documentaries, including profiles of Jacques Brel, Artie Shaw, Jake Thackray, and Dudley Moore, as well as histories of Experimental Music, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. 

Kenneth Sparr (Sweden). Kenneth Sparr received his Bachelor of Arts (History of Science, History of Literature and Philosophy) at the University of Lund, Sweden and a degree in librarianship in Stockholm. He has worked as a CIO at the municipality of Nynashamn, Sweden. Since the 1970s he has been researching early plucked instruments, with a focus on Swedish history. He has attended and given lectures at the CNRS in Tours, France, 1980, the Musée de la musique in Paris 1998 and American Musical Instrument Sociey (AMIS), Phoenix, in 2011 as well as the XVI Nordic Musicological Congress, Stockholm University in 2012. Lectures have also been given at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and at the Carl Malmsten School (guitar building courses). Kenneth Sparr has contributed to the second edition of Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. He has experience in building copies of historical plucked instruments as the lute and the guitar as well as the clavichord, but also in restoring guitars and an early Swedish square piano. One of the clavichords was built for the Stockholm Music Museum to be included in their collections and the building process was thoroughly documented. He is an amateur player of early plucked and keyboard instruments and collector of musical instruments as well as music prints and manuscripts. See his personal page at www.tabulatura.com.

Erik Stenstadvold (Norway).  Erik Stenstadvold is professor emeritus at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. He is a noted guitar historian and has published numerous articles on issues related to nineteenth-century guitar music and performing practice. His book, An Annotated Bibliography of Guitar Methods, 1760-1860 (Pendragon Press, 2010) has become a standard reference work on early guitar tutors. Stenstadvold has played a prominent role in the revival of the French guitarist-composer Antoine de Lhoyer, and has edited a three-volume critical edition of Lhoyer’s complete guitar duets (Chanterelle Edition, 2008). He was awarded the honorary prize Chitarra d’Oro for his musicological research at the 2008 Alessandria International Guitar Competition in Italy, and in 2010 he was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture for his services to French music. Stenstadvold has also played several CDs on period instruments, in particular two world-premiere recordings of guitar duets by Antoine de Lhoyer (with Martin Haug) and two other recordings featuring François de Fossa’s arrangements for two guitars of early string quartets by or attributed to Haydn (with Jukka Savijoki).

In 2021, Erik released a new critical edition, in 14 volumes, of Fernando Sor’s collected guitar music, published by Guitar Heritage (www.guitarheritage.com). He is also the author of three chapters, and co-author of one, in the new book, The Great Vogue for the Guitar in Western Europe.

Taro Takeuchi (Japan/UK). Taro Takeuchi was born in Kyoto, Japan. After completing his degrees in law and music in Tokyo, he studied early music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He now lives in London and he has been in great demand as a soloist and ensemble player. Taro has toured most European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, the USA and Japan. As a continuo player he has worked with The English Concert, The Royal Opera House, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Berlin Philharmonic, as well as Sir Simon Rattle, Rachel Podger and Nigel Kennedy. He has made numerous recordings for Deux-Elles, EMI, Hyperion Records, Harmonia Mundi, the BBC and others. His solo recordings Folias!, The Century That Shaped the Guitar and Affectuoso: Virtuoso Guitar Music from the 18th Century were received with critical acclaim and high praise. See his website.

Ulrich Wedemeier (Germany).  Ulrich Wedemeier first studied classical guitar at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover and subsequently specialized in playing lutes and historical guitars. Besides being active as a soloist and with renowned early music ensembles, he concentrates on CD and radio productions. In 2004 he received an ECHO KLASSIK award with the ensemble MUSICA ALTA RIPA for the CD “Telemann Vol. 1”, and in 2006 again an ECHO KLASSIK with HAMBURGER RATSMUSIK for the CD “Lübecker Virtuosen”. Ulrich Wedemeier is a guest at many opera houses. Concert tours have brought him through all of Europe, the USA, Southeast Asia, and Japan. His research about Madame Sidney Pratten led to his solo recording „velvet touch“, played on original Pratten-guitars. The book „Gitarre Zister Laute“ documents his collection of plucked instruments from 1600 to 1900. See his website:  www.guitarcollection.de.

James Westbrook (UK). Dr James Westbrook is a British-based organologist whose particular interest is in guitar construction. He is the author of two popular books: Guitars through the Ages (2002) and The Century that Shaped the Guitar (2006) as well as co-author of The Complete Illustrated book of the Acoustic Guitar (2012). He has given papers for The Classical Guitar Festival of Great Britain, European Guitar Teachers Association, The American Musical Instrument Society and The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. James has recently published in Early Music, The Journal of the Lute Society and the Soundboard Journal and contributed a chapter in Inventing the American Guitar: The Pre-civil War Innovations of C. F. Martin and his Contemporaries. In 2010 James was awarded the O’May studentship, for his Doctoral research into Guitar Making in Nineteenth-Century London at the University of Cambridge. He is a consultant and specialist for Brompton’s a London auction house, specializing in musical instruments, as well as a part-time luthier and restorer. James is currently a member of the Research staff at The University of Cambridge, Music Faculty, and he holds a Wolfson College, Cambridge, Research Fellowship; investigating ‘The Life and Work of David Rubio’.  See his website and personal page.

HONORARY MEMBERS

Tony Bingham (UK). Tony Bingham has sold his famous Hampstead premises, and although now officially retired will continue to run run his business just up the hill from the shop. He is planning to work on several unfinished projects, one of the first being an illustrated catalogue of his trade cards. See his website. 

 † Thomas F. Heck (USA). Thomas F. Heck organised the creation of the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) in 1973. Since then he has served it in various capacities: Director, Archivist, Contributing Editor of Soundboard, and lately Online Research Resources Librarian. For most of his career (1978-2000) he was professor and Head of the Music/Dance Library at the Ohio State University. In addition to authoring Mauro Giuliani: virtuoso guitarist and composer (Columbus, 1995, revised as an e-book in 2012), he co-authored Picturing performance: the iconography of the performing arts in concept and practice (1999). He has contributed articles to The New Grove dictionaries of music … in various editions since 1980, and remains engaged in guitar-related research and publication. Thomas Heck passed away in 2021.

Brian Jeffery (UK). Brian Jeffery is the author of the biography Fernando Sor Composer and Guitarist. In 2013 he published a new edition of the Arte de tocar la guitarra española (1799) of Fernando Ferandiere, this time with an introduction of forty pages (compared with the four-page introduction in his original modern edition of that work in 1977) incorporating much new information.  In 2017 he published a new book, España de la guerra: the Spanish political and military songs of the war in Spain 1808 to 1814, a subject which is new and unexplored territory because these songs have not been studied before. The book is not especially about the guitar, but the principal composer of these political songs is Fernando Sor.  In 2003 the annual guitar festival at Alessandria in Italy awarded him their Golden Guitar for his work in that field.  In 2012 the Guitar Foundation of America appointed him to its Hall of Fame.  He is the owner and director of the publishing firm Tecla Editions (www.tecla.com) which specializes in editions of guitar music at a high level of research and presentation.

Jeffrey Wells (USA). Jeffrey Wells did undergraduate work at California State University, Northridge and received his Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has performed in guitar master classes for Andres Segovia, Julian Bream, Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, and David Russell. Jeff is the owner of the Austin-Marie Collection which focuses on pre-modern-era guitars dating from the early seventeenth century through the latter half of the nineteenth century.