SHARKY-T is my stage name since my encounter with a great white shark (more about that at a later time.)
I started in school with flute and violin (first stage performance in San Jose, CA at age of 9) and discovered the guitar at the age of 12.
Since then, I experienced various music genres and types of guitar playing on classical, western acoustic, electric and bass guitars, thriving through various band-engagements and a broad stack of live performances (clubs, concerts, open-airs, band-contests).
„Beatles Complete“ was my first challenging teacher, followed by playing to records of Alan Parsens Project, Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen who inspired me along the way.
In September 1990, during an assignment in Charlotte, North Carolina, I went on a road trip through the Appalachian Mountains. Rather by chance the radio was set to WFAE 90.7 FM, a local radiostation, who played various artists from Windham Hill, Narada and other labels. I was so captivated by this completely different way of playing the guitar and interpreting pieces of music, that from this point onwards my musical endeavor had undergone a complete turnaround.
Back in Charlotte, I went straight away to a record store and fortunately found the WFAE playlist on the desk:
Tuck Andress (Reckless Precision), Tuck & Patty, William Ackermann, Chuck Loeb, Acoustic Alchemy, Ricardo Silveira, Spyro Gyra, Richard Elliot, Ken Navarro, Jonathan Butler and many others and last not least: Michael Hedges.
This definitely blew my mind and emptied my purse, after purchasing almost every CD on the playlist.
The next 3 months I spent the evenings and weekends sitting in my appartment practicing 2 handed interference of rhythm & melodies, discovering the myths of the acoustic guitar, including diving down the abyss of string-tortouring with open-tunings, tapping and finger-style picking.
Since then, I attended workshops and masterclasses with Frank Kuruc (1992), Don Ross (2004), Ralf Gauck (2007), Abi von Reininghaus (2010), Thomas Leeb (2015), Jon Gomm (2015), Antoine Dufour (2015), Heiko Bloemers (2016-2023), Rhythm Shaw (2016), Tanausú Luis (2016-2019), Maneli Jamal (2017, 2019), Adam Rafferty (2018), Jimmy Wahlsteen (2018), Emil Ernebro (2019), Alexandr Misko (2020), Shane Hennessy (2020, 2022), Zarek Silberschmidt (2022, 2023) and Sönke Meinen (2023).
Between 1996 and 2013, I supported various musicians and bands (Diane Ponzio, Double Time, Don Ross, Erik Mongrain) as their contract negotiator for booking venues, tour-manager and sound-engineer.
I opened for Double Time (Gitte Haus und Marc Rosenberger), Vicente Patiz, Meike Köster and love to perform at „open mic“ nights whenever possible.
As SHARKY-T, I have been a vocalist and fingerstyle guitar player for over 25 years and even composed a bunch of own songs. As practicing and recording take their time, I thrive my patience.
“There are no such things as wrongnotes, there’s only the look on your face.” Anonymous
„I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.“ Les Paul
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