Biography

Johannes Tonio Kreusch not only plays guitar, he lives it. Subtlety, sensitivity, quietly shaded tone, delicate, more spotted than plucked sounds draw small sound paintings of filigree introverted fragility.

Süddeutsche Zeitung

Johannes Tonio Kreusch, one of the “most creative classical guitarists of the present” (Acoustic Guitar Magazine), studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum and at the Juilliard School of Musicin New York . Since his solo debut at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1996, concert tours as a soloist and chamber musician have taken him to many cities in Europe, the USA, the Far East and Latin America. His intensive collaboration with composers of our time resulted in numerous new works for the guitar.

Johannes Tonio Kreusch regularly works with renowned musicians from the fields of classical music and improvised music, such as Markus Stockhausen, Giora Feidman, Klaus Doldinger, FM Einheit (Einstürzende Neubauten), Cornelius Claudio Kreusch or guitar colleagues such as Andy York, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Máximo Diego Pujol, Pavel Steidl, Fred Frith, Antigoni Goni and Badi Assad. The Carnegie Hall concert debut with metropolitan opera tenor Anthony Dean Griffey called the New York Times a “revelation.” With the violinist Doris Orsan, he has been a successful chamber music duo for many years.

Johannes Tonio Kreusch has produced numerous well-received CDs and radio recordings. His recordings include not only the standard repertoire (from the lute music of Johann Sebastian Bach to the Villa-Lobos Etudes) but also world-first recordings of contemporary music and his own compositions. The French music newspaper Classica-Répertoire awarded his CD recording of the Villa-Lobos Etudes the “10 de Répertoire” prize and called it “a new reference recording since the legendary recordings of Narciso Yepes and Julian Bream”.

In addition to his concert activities, Johannes Tonio Kreusch gives seminars and master classes at home and abroad. He is the author of numerous guitar-educational publications and artistic director of the International Guitar Festivals in Hersbruck and Wertingen.

Together with Cornelius Claudio Kreusch he leads the music festival “Look into the Future” for the city of Burghausen and founded the concert series “Ottobrunner Konzerte” near Munich in 2008. For their successful work as artistic director of this series, they received the Tassilo Culture Prize of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2012.
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Johannes Tonio Kreusch – a fantastic guitarist and at least as much an enormously sensitive musician.

Bayerischer Rundfunk