Tommy Emmanuel, CGP, is one of the world's best known guitar virtuosos, a fact he has already proven several times in front of full houses at Müpa Budapest. Born in 1955, the Australian musician is a master of the acoustic guitar, often ranked among the ten top players of the instrument. His remarkable ten-finger picking technique inspired by Chet Atkins is truly breathtaking, but everyone who has seen or heard it knows this already anyway. Although he is coming out with a new album in 2023, just like at all of his solo concerts, we might hear anything from his vast oeuvre.
Tommy Emmanuel, CGP, was born into a musical family and with a tremendous gift for playing music. He was already picking away by the age of four and was soon touring the country as a member of the family band. After their father's death in 1966, Tommy and his equally talented brother Phil came under the wing of the Australian country music pioneer Buddy Williams. So even though he therefore received no formal musical education, a natural genius does not need one: it was sufficient to be influenced by one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, Chet Atkins, who felt Emmanuel was one of the top adepts of the ten-finger technique in the world. It is no coincidence that it was with him that Atkins collaborated on the last album of his life (1997's The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World), nor that he bestowed his own half-ironic and half-serious mark of quality (CGP stands for Certified Guitar Player) on Emmanuel. This artist who plays the bass line with his thumb and the melody and harmony with the rest of his fingers, starts out from country, but can also cross into jazz, blues, bluegrass, folk and rock equally simultaneously: he is in effect one who truly plays anything, but making everything his own with his unique rhythms and charismatic stage presence. Joining Tommy Emmanuel, CGP as his guest in the first part of the concert is his outstanding and likewise highly sought-after fellow musician Richard Smith. English-born but resident in the United States for decades, Smith too is a prominent representative of the ten-finger guitar strumming technique, with a repertoire spanning nearly the entire spectrum from folk music and classics to jazz and pop hits.
Presented by: Müpa Budapest
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We wish to inform you that in the event that Müpa Budapest's underground garage and outdoor car park are operating at full capacity, it is advisable to plan for increased waiting times when you arrive. In order to avoid this, we recommend that you depart for our events in time, so that you you can find the ideal parking spot quickly and smoothly and arrive for our performance in comfort. The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.
