Emily Shaw
Emily Shaw is a classical guitarist, teacher, and luthier currently living in Ottawa, Ontario. She studied guitar with her father, Mike Shaw, until university, at which point she moved to London, Ontario to study with Wilma van Berkel at the University of Western Ontario. Emily completed a master’s degree (MMus) in guitar performance in 2016 under the tutelage of Patrick Roux at the University of Ottawa. As a full-time musician, Emily now divides her time between performing, recording, teaching and guitar building.
As a luthier, Emily builds guitars by commission and has supplied instruments to guitarists around the world. She is particularly interested in building unique instruments that cater to the aesthetic and physical needs of individual players as well as in building historically inspired guitars after builders such as Stradivarius, Torres, Fleta, Bouchet, and Simplicio. Emily writes a blog about her adventures in guitar building that can be viewed on her website emilyshawguitar.ca.
In performance, Emily strives to engage her audience with expressive interpretations of music from across the centuries. She has a weakness for emotionally charged, lush harmonies, amusing character pieces and new works for the classical guitar. With the support of the Ontario Arts Council, Emily released her debut CD, Vespers, in 2019 featuring a variety of evening music from across the centuries. Her second album, In The Night, will be released in October 2021. This project, supported by the the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, features new works for the guitar, including 3 commissions from Canadian composers Amy Brandon, Anya Gowan, and Elissar Hanna, and 3 pieces that were originally written for other instruments newly arranged for guitar by Emily herself. The album will be recorded on a unique self-built instrument that offers interchangeable fingerboards to allow for a variety of extended techniques and harmonies.
When not practising, teaching, or building guitars, Emily enjoys hiking, cooking, spending time with her family, and gardening.