Karlijn Langendijk, the finalist of our 2018 Acoustic Guitarist Of The Year, is going to have a very busy few months; the Dutch nylon-string player is releasing a guitar duo album called Meraki with Czech guitarist Ladislav Pazdera on 12 December and touring with our 2019 AGOTY winner Christie Lenée.
It's a showcase of two of the finest young European acoustic players around, but Karlijn is doing it all while still recovering from the hand injury she was suffering with during her remarkable 2018’s live finals performance at the UK Guitar Show.
“After playing the competition I travelled to India to treat my hand injury that had only become worse,” Karlijn tells us. “I had so many new ideas but I couldn’t bring any of them to life because I had to stop playing completely. Little by little I recovered (now at around 70%) and all the music that had been locked-up inside me for all this while could finally come out.
"Ladislav and I started a guitar duo - and whichever musical ideas I had, or he had, we worked them out to some interesting and diverse duo pieces. To me, making this album was a way of finding back my passion and joy in playing.”
The duo have launched a crowdfunding campaign for Meraki here with Startnext, offering rewards for backers including guitar lessons and private concerts.
In November Karlijn hits the road in Europe with two other innovative female acoustic guitar players for the MusicSHEeans Guitar Tour, and it’s the live launch of a movement with big plans for the future. “In 2018 I co-founded MusiSHEans,” Karlijn explains. “It’s a community to support and empower female musicians, with Vivek Advani & Judith Beckedorf. Currently we are focussing on guitarists/stringed instruments in particular. And for that we are organising a big tour in November to announce this initiative across Europe.
"This year’s line up for the announcement tour is me, Judith Beckedorf (DE), Claire Besson (FR), and Christie Lenée (USA) - who is this year’s winner of Acoustic Guitarist of the Year. We’re thrilled that such amazing musicians are joining hands to spread – that music doesn’t have a gender!”
You can check out the dates for the tour on Karlijn Langendijk’s site
