John Sweeney
Waltons New School of Music Faculty
Guitar • Bodhrán • Tin Whistle • Introducing Guitar for Adults • Introducing Guitar for Teens • Introducing Bodhrán • Acoustic Blues Guitar Basics • Trad Guitar Basics • Irish Music Tasters • Outreach Programme • Music at Work Programme
John comes from a musical family and has been studying, playing and teaching guitar, as well as bodhrán, tin whistle and a range of Irish traditional instruments, for over thirty years. He works in many different styles, including blues, rock, jazz, traditional and flamenco, and he has performed and recorded with a number of Irish groups, gigging extensively throughout Ireland, Canada, the UK, the US and Spain. He began teaching in 1988 at the Scarborough School of Guitar in Toronto, Canada, where he also studied composition and flatpick technique. He has also studied flamenco guitar with Miguel Escudero Lopez in Seville, Spain and traditional music at St. Enda’s Folk Park & Museum, and he continues to develop techniques in a range of guitar styles. John was the only guitar player selected by the renowned vocal innovator and improviser Bobby McFerrin to perform with him in the National Concert Hall for Bobby McFerrin Meets Ireland (2013), a unique collaboration for the Waltons World Masters Series between Bobby and a small, select group of Irish performers – chosen to represent the creativity, tradition and spirit of Ireland and selected through an Ireland-wide audition process. He has taught at the New School since 2003 and also teaches guitar and bodhrán courses for our Outreach Programme. ‘I’ve always felt that truly great teachers are a conduit between music’s mathematical conundrums (as that’s exactly what the fundamentals of music really are; without its pretty melodies and its emotion-inducing character, music is primarily a collection of mathematical gremlins) and the student’s joy of confidently playing/performing on his/her chosen instrument. Some great teachers out there (some of whom I have the pleasure and sheer humbling luck to work alongside) are indeed, like my analogy, conduits; some are elegant bridges, others are the proverbial blinding-light doorway through which all is revealed to their once-exasperated students. Me? I’m more of a smashed window!’
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