icone-guitare




Guitar Image Home

Adrien Savary-Freestone was born in Paris in 1992. His father was a music teacher, so Adrien had a close connection with music from birth. He started studying archeology at the Sorbonne in Paris, but soon realised he wanted to become an instrument maker. He visited Parisian luthiers, and following their advice, trained as a cabinetmaker at "La Bonne Graine", a school in Paris. His teachers were very enthousiastic about his work and encouraged him to continue. In 2014, Adrien graduated with a degree in Cabinet Making, then moved to Newark, U.K. to study guitar making. Under the guidance of his teachers James Lister and Adrien Lucas, he built his first instrument, a Spanish-style classical guitar. Although he learned how to make several types of instruments (classical guitars, acoustic guitars, violins, etc.), it was soon obvious that Spanish classical guitars were his favourite instruments. Newark College was then part of the "Leonardo Project", a European program that aimed to use environmentally friendly local and renewable materials in guitar making rather than using exotic woods, such as rosewood and ebony. It was thanks to that project that Adrien met the Flemish master Walter Verreydt, one of the teachers at the "Centrum voormuziekinstrumentenbouw" (CMB) in Puurs, Belgium. After graduating from Newark, Adrien went to the CMB in Puurs and began working with Walter Verreydt and Dirk de Hertogh, specialising in both classical and historical instruments (lutes, theorbos, etc.). Back in France, he worked for the Parisian luthier Wolfgang Früh for one year, repairing and restoring lutes, baroque guitars and ouds. He has had his own workshop in Vincennes, France, since 2021, where he mainly makes classical guitars based on famous models by renowned artisans such as Torres, García, Hauser and Bouchet. In August 2022, he entered the international guitar making competition "Antonio Marin Montero" in Granada, Spain, and was awarded Third Prize for his Enrique García model.

Guitar Image Home

"I think that a good way of considering guitar making and continually refining my skills is to try and understand the way the great masters worked and made their instruments. Most of my guitars so far have been greatly inspired by them. However, my instruments are not meant to be exact copies, or fac similes. Although each of them references a specific model, I always keep in mind that my guitars are meant to be played by twenty-first century guitarists, so I give them a little touch of modernity, meeting the very high standards of today's luthiers. In fact, I consider my instruments more as "homages" to those great masters, and my wish is to enable musicians to choose a guitar in the Torres, or Lacote "style" for instance, but at a more affordable price than an original model."