About Mark
I didn’t set out to play guitar in cafes, restaurants, and elsewhere out in public. I took a few early guitar lessons, but misspent most of my youth tinkering with computers and playing video games. It wasn’t until my Junior year of college that I decided to start taking classical guitar lessons, mostly as a diversion from dual majors in Math and English.
It turned out to be addictive. Two decades later and I’m still playing. After college, guitar became a sometimes more, sometimes less prominent part of life as work and career took their toll on my free time. Over the years, I’ve had some long dry stretches without much playing, but eventually I always end up with a guitar back in my hands. Thanks to some fantastic teachers, I’ve grown a lot along the way – both as a musician and as a person.
I can never repay the gifts that teachers like Phil, David, Ben, Sarah, and Joan have given me in the form of their time, encouragement, and insight. So, instead, I try to return what I’ve been given by performing and sharing my music with anyone who might enjoy it. I hope you’ll browse around the web site and find out a little bit more by listening to samples of my music, learning about some of my influences, and coming to an upcoming performance.
About Mark’s Guitars
My primary guitar is a 1992 Greg Brandt Classical guitar. This is a fantastic instrument; anyone looking for a new guitar should definitely check out Greg Brandt. Most of the recordings on this site were made with this guitar – and it sounds even better in person!
I also own two other classical guitars that I play depending upon the weather and various cosmological factors that affect the ability to keep a guitar in tune. During college, I started playing a 1986 cedar top Candelas guitar. This guitar came from the Candelas guitar shop owned by Candelario Delgado at 2014 6th Street in Tijuana, Mexico. A little rough in it’s appearance, I still prefer this guitar to many others costing ten times it’s original purchase price (it was quite a bargain).
My other, equally well loved, guitar is a 1993 classical guitar by luthier Alan Chapman. This guitar has the unique distinction of being recycled – the guitar’s redwood top spent the first part of it’s life as a shelf in a department store in Northampton, MA. A friend of the luthier salvaged this beautiful piece of straight-grained redwood during a remodeling of the building and gave it to Alan to use as he saw fit. Milled down, book matched, and attached to rosewood back and sides, this shelf has become a wonderful guitar. The sound is somewhat like a cedar-top guitar but has a quality that a classical and jazz player friend has described as “smoky”.
I also occasionally travel with a Soloette travel guitar on business trips. It fits easily in an overhead compartment so I don’t have to worry about baggage handlers the way I always do when travelling with one of my full size instruments. Highly recommended for those travelers who find themselves wishing they had something to do in their hotel room other than channel surf!