Gifted composer and fingerstyle guitarist Richard Gilewitz has trained with some of the best guitarists the United States has to offer. He learned well, and over the years, he himself has become the teacher to many others with his instructional video and songbook. Gilewitz has lived in Alabama, New Jersey, and Florida. He found musical influences everywhere during those early years and even later on, including artists like John Fahey, the Beatles, David Walbert, Leo Kottke, Flatt & Scruggs, and Andres Segovia. By the time Gilewitz entered college, he was composing and performing often. He played at a number of local coffeehouses, while a student at the University of Alabama. Instead of music, his major was computer science. He even graduated and found a so-called normal job, setting his music aside. It was too late though, the music was in his soul, and something as small as financial security couldn't make him forget about it. Gilewitz's first recording, Somewhere in Between, was released in 1992 under the Hacker Backer Records label. Voluntary Solitary hit the market two years later. Synapse Collapse, a third full-length offering for fans, came out in the summer of 1997. "Embryonic Journey," "Minuet for the Backroads," "Echoing Wilderness," "Dance," and "Jeannie Sleeping" are a few of the 13 tracks showcased on the album. Gilewitz's music is never disappointing and easily blends styles from jazz, blues, and folk, to classical and rock, with his acoustic fingerstyle to come up with a sound that is unmistakably Richard Gilewitz. That style and sound has earned him numerous positive reviews in magazines from all over the states and keeps him busy performing, sometimes well over a 100 days out of the year. For 2000, Gilewitz put together an album called the Music of David Walbert, in tribute to Walbert, a classical guitar composer, and one of Gilewitz's teachers. ~ Charlotte Dillon