Eltjo Haselhoff
Eltjo Haselhoff is a Dutch ‘fingerstyle’ guitarist and composer. Born in 1962, he is self-taught and has played the guitar since he was 8 years old. He also plays several other musical instruments, although he does not read or write music. Eltjo says: “What a great initiative. The person who invented this crazy idea deserves a statue! Without Bert’s inspiration, maybe I would still be strumming 3 chords today… I enjoyed the TransAcoustic Yamaha. I may get myself one of these Yamahas soon, probably the concert model. It would make a great couch guitar and it’s certainly a lot of guitar for the money.”
Black Mountain Rag
trad., arr. by Eltjo Haselhoff for Bert Jansch
“Bert Jansch’s performance of Davey Graham’s guitar instrumental Anji inspired many players throughout the world. The song spread like a computer virus – a benign one – long before the Internet was created. I was 13 years old when I first heard the song, and it was a paradigm shift for me, in terms of what I though could be done with an acoustic guitar. But, I’m not playing Anji. I am playing an arrangement I wrote a few years ago of a famous old fiddle tune – Black Mountain Rag. It is inspired by Anji. I think this is the most challenging piece that I can play for this journey and it’s what the Anji mentality can lead to.”
“Playing the TransAcoustic brought back sweet memories, because my first ‘real’ steel string was a Yamaha FG-180 and I will always remember the experience when I first played it in the music store at the age of 13, being used to a cheap classical guitar on which I put steel strings… Words fail me to describe the emotions I felt at that moment, an experience I will never forget. It took me almost a year of money scraping before I could get the guitar on my 14th birthday… it cost 450 guilders (204 Euros), an ASTRONOMICAL amount of money for me in those days. It was the best birthday of my life!!!”
