Sönke Meinen: Guitar Festival Performance- Live

Sönke Meinen plays on the Open Stage at The 6. Guitar Festival in Rietitown

If you are into fingerstyle guitar (and not necessarily the tapping percussive style), then I think you will enjoy this video by German guitarist Soenke Meine.

Soenke has a very nice and pleasant sounding approach, more in the vein of a guitarist that focuses in on the getting a tone out of his instrument rather than a lot of fancy tapping. After all, some of his main hero’s include Tommy Emmanuel and Joe Robinson who really stay away from guitar tapping for the most part…

You will notice too that Soenke Meinen plays with a thumbpick, which obviously is going to create a different sound for the fingerpicking. Personally I prefer this sound on guitar, as Chet Atkins and Merle Travis had to be doing something right, huh? (not to mention Tommy Emmanuel)

“Soenke Meinen was born in Aurich in 1991 and grew up in the area of Ostfriesland – Lower Saxony, Germany. His general interest in music was awakened early due to two acoustic guitars owned by his father. He started with guitar lessons in 1999. His teacher at this time was Emile Joseph at Aurich School of Music. Soenke´s first public appearance was at the tender age of 10.

The first visit of a live event with Tommy Emmanuel from Australia in 2007 led his way to fingerstyle guitar. 

Soon after beginning to perform regularly, Soenke started to compose and arrange his own tunes. With two of his early compositions he achieved the third place at Open Strings Guitar Competition 2008 in Osnabrueck. He was by far the youngest entrant in this competition.

2009 Soenke met another Australian fingerstyler: Joe Robinson. After Joe’s live show they both jammed and by return Soenke was invited to be part of Joe’s further gigs as a special guest. Several performances followed in various towns all around the northern part of Germany.

Since 2009 Soenke has increased the quantity of solo concerts frequently and the audiences accept him enthusiastically. Within a very short period of time he has attracted the attention of many prominent guitarists and is recognized as one of the most talented players in fingerstyle guitar. Since then he played on stage with Adam Rafferty, Peter Finger, Brooks Robertson, Tim Sparks and many other well-known guitarists.”  more here

I’m imaging that Soenke Meinen will be doing a lot of great things on the guitar in the future… He’s been a great guitarist for quite some time. In fact, check this video out of him when he was younger!!!