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