Guitar icon Tommy Emmanuel CGP is no stranger to iconic stages from Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to London’s Royal Festival Hall and Paris’ L’Olympia. The legendary entertainer has dazzled audiences across the world.
Tommy has a Grammy Award, multiple ARIA Awards and countless accolades, but nothing means more to Tommy than the three letters Chet Atkins designated at the end of Tommy’s name: CGP. The title of Certified Guitar Player was the highest honor Atkins could bestow on another player – a signifier that the recipient had not only mastered the instrument but taken it to new vistas and become a guiding light for the next generation of pickers.
Like Tommy, Chet had never gone to a niversity, and the CGP. was his version of a PHD or a Doctorate of the guitar. He gave the honor to Tommy and only five other handpicked players.
As a songwriter and a performer, Tommy is a melting pot of influences across genres, form pop to bluegrass and jazz to rock n’ roll. To him, music is rhythm and emotion, all other distinctions are meaningless. Anyone who has seen Tommy play will tell you, the vocalist is there, as is the drummer, the bass player and the rhythm and lead guitarists.
In a way that must often be seen to be believed, Tommy plays all the parts of a full band simultaneously, his fingers dancing around the fretboard with a dexterity and speed that would seem impossible if you weren’t witnessing it.
Tommy’s determination to entertain and move audiences through the power of music, remains undimmed as he closes in on his seventh decade as a performer. He can turn a jazz café into a cathedral or a radio station performance into the Ryman. Witness the pin drop silent audience hanging on every note of “Sail On,” the propulsive rhythm of “Classical Gas,” the impossible bluegrass speed-picking on “Tall Fiddler” and the delicate wringing of melody out of Paul Simon’s immortal “American Tune,” is to experience the communion of music at its most pure. That is Tommy Emmanuel.
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