Lucas Michailidis - The Offering

In 2001, Lucas Michailidis, a guitarist from Melbourne/Australia, captured the first prize at the “Open Strings” Festival in Osnabrück with a convincing performance. His solo CD, “The Offering”, finally makes this remarkable musician known to European audiences. “The Offering” represents acoustic guitar playing in its finest incarnation, without overdubs or studio tricks. By use of flowing melodic phrases, Michailidis mixes folk, pop and jazz into a grandiose pastel tableau, consistently avoiding clichés. The grooving cut “Hedgehog”, with bouncing bass lines, demonstrates that he has command of more than just the gentle sides. The repertoire of “The Offering” offers attractive musical colors and also explores all the possibilities of fingerstyle play. Independent lines, majestic chords, whirring overtones, humorous lightness (“Easy Chair”), bright open tunings – Michailidis provides everything that makes for interesting and vigorous acoustic guitar playing today. At the same time, “The Offering” shows him to be a composer of some refinement with a knack for intensive moods and melodies of rich character.