Australian guitar legend returns to the UK

He was voted Best Acoustic Guitarist in the 2008 Guitar Player Readers’ Choice Awards. He’s been nominated for two Grammy awards. He has four platinum and gold album awards. He was the Most Popular Guitarist in Rolling Stone (Australia)’s poll for two years running. He performed at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, in front of a global audience of more than 2 billion people.

He’s a household name in Australia and a big box office draw throughout Europe and the USA - and yet, in the UK, he is relatively unknown, outside a rapidly expanding group of fans who rave about his amazing dexterity and innate sensitive feel for melody.

He is Tommy Emmanuel, a guitar maestro who has been hailed by those in the know as one of – if not, the - finest players of his generation, and he's returning to the UK for shows in November.

After teaching himself to play the guitar at the age of four, Tommy became a professional performer just two years later – until the authorities found out and hauled him back to school! During a career which has spanned over four decades, he has won numerous awards and accolades, one of the most treasured being the title ‘Certified Guitar Player’ – an honour shared with only three other musicians in the world – bestowed on him by the late, great Chet Atkins. Tommy’s unique technique, which he calls simply ‘finger style’, involves using all ten fingers, much in the way that a pianist plays a keyboard, giving him a distinctive sound which is all his own.

A superb musician and a charismatic showman, Tommy is much in demand not only as a performer but as a producer, arranger and mentor. He has played on recordings by dozens of popular artists, including Air Supply and Men At Work, opened for Tina Turner on her ‘Break Every Rule’ European tour and collaborated with hundreds of musical legends, including Les Paul, Eric Clapton, Keith Urban, Joe Walsh, Stevie Wonder, Hank Marvin and Sir George Martin.

Now you can check out Australia’s best kept secret when Tommy Emmanuel returns to the UK to play six headline shows, including his first gig in London in over three years:

November
24 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
25 London The Forum
27 Belfast Waterfront
28 Manchester Bridgewater Hall
29 Newcastle The Journal Tyne Theatre
30 Sheffield City Hall

With his diary already fully booked for 2009, this will probably be the last chance to see this hard-working musician perform in the UK until 2010, so make sure you don’t miss out - grab this opportunity to discover Tommy Emmanuel for yourself.

For more information, log on to Tommyemmanuel.com.