Author Description

Master guitarist Al Petteway ventures into new territory with 15 Celtic-inspired, traditional, and New Age fingerstyle compositions in standard and alternate tunings. Derived from Al's award-winning solo recording of the same title, each piece bears the inimitable Petteway signature of profoundly graceful, inspired innovation. Written in standard notation and tab with several pieces in alternate tunings. Al began his professional music career at the age of 11. He played guitar, drums, and string bass with a variety of rock and folk acts in the Washington D.C. area during the 60's, becoming a local legend by the time he went to college to study music composition in 1970. In 1977, Al took a job with The National Geographic Society. His work as Supervisor of Picture Editing for the society's Image Collection, gave him the artistic freedom to develop his own acoustic guitar style. While long recognized as one of the country's foremost bluegrass and folk sidemen, Celtic music specialty label Maggie's Music signed Al in 1993 and released Whispering Stones following by The Waters and the Wild-exposing his solo acoustic guitar work to an international audience for the first time. Al left the National Geographic to become a full-time musician in the spring of 1995, just before the release of Midsummer Moon.