MEET AN ACOUSTIC MASTER WHO PROBABLY BURNS ABOUT 1,500 CALORIES WITH EACH PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S TOCCATA
By Adam Kovac
IT’S BEEN A wild few years for Marcin Patrzalek. The Polish guitarist, who goes by just his first name on his myriad popular social media accounts, has risen to become the Big Thing in classical guitar, enjoying crossover success virtually unparalleled in that world, culminating with his recent acquisition of the biggest symbol of having “made it”: his very own signature guitar.
The floppy-haired guitarist rose to fame through videos of his flamboyant and percussive acoustic guitar techniques: he strums, picks, taps and slaps all while treating his instrument just as much as a drum set as a guitar. It’s an approach that has well-positioned Marcin in the current music industry zeitgeist, where visual panache is as important, if not more so, than the actual music. (Case in point: Marcin has just under 82,000 monthly Spotify listeners but has almost 10 times that many You-Tube subscribers and more than 1 million followers on Instagram). It’s particularly impressive given the traditionalist mindset that can dominate much of the classical music world.
“Classical guitar is often kind of about emulating other people, especially older generations of classical musicians,” he said. “So I just wanted to do the wildest thing possible, and that culminated in this style, which just happened to be very visually stimulating.”
Marcin has had ample opportunity to bring that style to wider audiences; for t
