The Musical Heritage Center of Middle Tennessee is pleased to announce that The Nashville Guitar Academy’s first workshop will be held October 23 – 25, 2008 at The Fiddle & Pick building in Pegram, TN. The instructors for the first event are Tim May, Pat Flynn, and Stefan Papasoff. Tuition is $295; registration forms can be downloaded at http://www.thenashvilleguitaracademy.com .

The Nashville Guitar Academy is a new intensive three-day workshop that is designed to provide attendees with guitar instruction at a higher and more personalized level than they would experience at other guitar “camps” or workshops. It will be a fun, exciting and supportive learning environment for the attendees. The instructors will help the students become better guitarists and “musicians” by developing their improvisational skills, improving their rhythm guitar playing and “time feel”, helping them to project a better sound from their instruments, teaching them techniques to better accompany singers (including themselves) and other instrumentalists. They will help students maximize their progress by helping them to develop learning and practice strategies, and they will also teach students how to develop a working repertoire of songs in whatever style they wish to pursue.

Guitar, banjo and mandolin player Tim May has been playing since age 11. In 1989, Tim founded Crucial Smith, a progressive acoustic bluegrass band based in Nashville, which produced three well-received albums and performed regularly at high-profile festivals including Telluride, The Walnut Valley Festival and Winterhawk. He has toured with Patty Loveless and the John Cowan Band, performed at the Grand Ole Opry in 2006/2007 and was the solo guitarist on I’ll Fly Away, nominated for the 2006 Country Instrumental of the Year Grammy Award. He performs regularly with his wife, fiddler Gretchen Priest and their band Plaidgrass and is respected nationwide as a teacher and clinician. He’s taught at the Nashville Guitar College, South Plains College and at Nashcamp, as well as traveled the country as a clinician for Breedlove Guitars.

Pat Flynn is a well known name, in one way or another, to music fans all over the world. You may recognize him as a member of a groundbreaking musical group, or a first-call Nashville recording session player, or a producer, songwriter, and artist. As guitarist/singer/songwriter for New Grass Revival, Flynn, along with Sam Bush, John Cowan, and B?©la Fleck, influenced many of today’s best-known artists while building New Grass Revival’s own loyal audience to near cult status. During his tenure with NGR, Frets magazine’s National Readers Poll voted Pat as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" for five consecutive years. For winning five years in a row, Flynn was inducted into the Frets “Gallery of Greats” alongside Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and Tony Rice. Flynn has been a session guitarist on more than 350 CD projects.

Guitarist Stefan Papasoff began playing in clubs around his hometown of Pittsburgh at age 14 and by 16, had left high school to tour the US and Canada with his own band, performing at concerts and music festivals. He attended and graduated from the esteemed Studio Music and Jazz Guitar program at the University of Miami while spending his nights performing in the South Florida music scene, playing everything from rock to R&B to jazz. After leaving Miami, he spent a summer playing in South America with his band and performing for the Miss Universe Pageant before moving to New York City. While living in New York, he earned a Master’s degree from New York University’s Jazz Studies Program while teaching in the jazz department there. A highly regarded performer, studio musician and teacher/clinician, Stefan now calls Nashville home.

Please feel free to phone us with any questions about The Nashville Guitar Academy at 615-352-8672 or 917-225-4531. We look forward to seeing you there!

Visit The Nashville Guitar Academy’s website at: http://www.thenashvilleguitaracademy.com