INTERNATIONAL GUITAR NIGHT South Africa

International Guitar Night (IGNSA) is a series of performances held every summer and winter to bring to our South African doorstep the world’s greatest and most accomplished acoustic guitar players in the world today.

Acoustic because Tony Cox, the show’s creator has a great passion for the acoustic guitar and knows that a solo acoustic guitarist with a phenomenal technique, a strong delivery and great stage presence, can bring any audience roaring to its feet howling for more, just as effectively as any high-priced superstar in a stadium with an entourage of hundreds.

Says Cox, ‘This kind of intense and brilliant guitar playing is in no way brought to the people of South Africa through its own media, yet the art represents the cutting edge of what is possible on a mere wooden box with six strings. There is a great love here for this instrument that is far broader than what radio and TV are willing to give out and that love sweeps right across the age spectrum. It is this gap that IGN hopes to fill’.

The body of an electric guitar is made from a single, solid piece of wood and needs to be plugged into an amplifier in order to hear it properly, whereas an acoustic guitar has an acoustic box and can generate its own sound without amplification. Make no mistake though, the current crop of acoustic players all use pickups on their guitars and are all amplified, creating massive soundscapes with their playing.

IGN’s main focus is on those players who use their right-hand fingers to individually pluck the strings creating bass, rhythm, melody and percussive lines all at the same time, like a mini-orchestra coaxed out by the fingers of the right hand (or in some cases, the left hand). It makes for mesmerising and exhilarating music.

WEBLINKS

www.internationalguitarnight.co.za

www.facebook.com/internationalguitarnight

For more media information, photos and interviews please contact Berniece Friedmann 021 434 4951 / 082 892 5877 bernfried@kingsley.co.za