Ganz Guitars Blog

A friend gave me the difficult news that Jean-Herve was killed in his home in Haiti in March of this year. He was 54 years young. I won’t go into the grisly details, preferring to recall a little about Jean-Hervé.

I met Jean-Hervé on the phone about 18 years ago when he said he wanted to order a guitar with 7 strings. We had many amiable conversations about the prospective instrument. He wanted the best wood, spruce and African Blackwood. He was a musician who played many instruments. He was a friend of another customer Huayna Jiminez. At the time they were both in Florida.

Here is a recording of him providing backround music to the reading of the Haitian constitution. The words are somewhat inspiring.

https://donpaul1.bandcamp.com/track/jean-herv-paul-guitar-as-don-paul-reads-excerpts-from-haytis-constitution-of-1805

Article 6 of the Haitian Constitution:

The house of every citizen is an inviolable asylum.

I’ll write more about the guitar later. It’s a fun one. For now, I’ll just note that I know he loved the guitar and posted pictures he shared a few weeks ago on a social media platform.

Jean, thank you for touching lives with music. May the music of the universe be with you.

A few days ago, I posted about Ana Pietrzak playing Reflection on my guitar... Here’s another rendition of Ana playing Reflection. She stopped into GSI in Santa Monica on a recent trip (pre-stay-at-home) to record this video.

A few days ago I introduced Anna and her husband Carl Petersson. Today I want to have a closer look at Anna. First, check out her website: http://annapietrzak.com/en/anna-pietrzak . She has lots of information there, lots of biographical details, recordings, videos, schedule of engagements (as of this writing I don’t know how this may be disrupted due to the corona virus), photos. Here’s one with her brother, Łukasz.

Together they made an album of music. One piece you might enjoy is Deciso, which you can find at http://annapietrzak.com/en/farewell-anna-lukasz-pietrzak

She also makes music solo, and in ensembles with other instrumentalists and vocalists.

Anna used a guitar I built to record a beautiful piece, Reflection by Jason Nett. This piece appears at the end of a video she put together in homage of a festival, Guitaromania 2019. Reflection is the soundtrack at beginning at the 16 minute mark of the video. At the end of the video is a memory of Łukasz .

I am pleased, and touched, that Anna used my guitar to play and record Reflection. You can hear the entire piece here. I hope you enjoy it.

Here’s the guitar, El Negrito

I met this amazing guitarist, Anna Pietrzak, at a picnic in Vancouver BC in 2018, or was it 2017… has it been that long ago? She’s from Poland, and her husband Carl Petersson is from Sweden. I immediately took a shine to both and had a nice conversation where Carl mentioned that they anticipated moving to Vancouver… That happened in that fall of 2019 (for sure) and since then I’ve been welcomed into their downtown Vancouver apartment multiple times. In addition to being an excellent guitarist, Anna is a good cook, and Carl makes a good salad. They also make music together. I’m so thankful and want to share them!

I’ll write more about them in the future, but for this entry, I’ll just include a very interesting piece that they performed together.

In closing, I’ll just note that today is March 30 2020, and the state of Washington is under a “Stay Home” order. The border between BC and Washington is closed to all but commercial traffic. I’m afraid that means I won’t be getting together with Anna and Carl real soon, but I can write about them!

Here’s a link that explains Stay Safe, Stay Home. https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/inslee-announces-stay-home-stay-healthy%C2%A0order

One of the most used, most reproduced, most beloved and dependable designs for classical guitars: Hauser 1937.

If this one looks familiar, maybe it’s because it has appeared here on the blog before. That was about 10 years ago, when I first started this blog. See also http://ganzguitars.com/wp/hauser-strung/

I recently bought it back from a customer who told a story about having a long standing injury to his hand, that prevented him enjoying playing anymore. Sad for him….

The guitar is in great condition, and sounds good, very fun to play, and is available now (November 2019).

• Scale length: 650 mm
• Top: Euro Spruce
• Back/Sides: East Indian Rosewood
• Custom burl rosette