Lluís Gómez FlamenGrass 4tet
Spain
At an early age and largely encouraged by the musical atmosphere in his family, Lluís Gómez started teaching himself the acoustic guitar and the electric bass. He studied two years of flute and went on to study classical guitar at the age of 18 with Pere Payes at the Music School of Premià de Mar, and subsequently took up the electric guitar with Josep Traver. He also studied modern harmony with Ramón Montoliu at Badalona’s Municipal School of Music.
At the age of 30 he started learning fiddle, first self-teaching and then he studied with Raúl Munizaga.
The discovery of bluegrass through the Banjo Paris Session album was a watershed in his career. He was so taken by this style that he immediately picked up the five string banjo and took lessons from Sedo Garcia and Ricky Araiza in Barcelona. He then travelled to France, Ireland, the UK and the US to take lessons from Jean Marie Redon, Bill Keith, Tony Trischka, Pete Wernick, Noam Pikelny, Béla Fleck, Adam Larrabee, and Jayme Stone among others.
He has performed and recorded extensively since then with many artists and bands, always on the Folk scene but also in a wide range of styles, from flamenco to pop or rock music, and he has recorded the music for several films and performed on the theater as a musician/actor.
Widely acknowledged as a performer both at home and abroad (he has recorded three CDs with his very own tracks), Lluís Gómez is one of the great connoisseurs of bluegrass music in Spain. He has written several methods to learn how to play the five string banjo, including a Spanish-Catalan bilingual book written in collaboration with Toni Giménez. He regularly writes for several specialized magazines and in March 2015 he was the front cover feature of the prestigious Banjo Newsletter magazine.
He also plays mandolin and is the co-author with Oriol Saña of the book called “The Bluegrass Violin” written in English and Spanish. He is the author of “Fun Solos to Play”, “Early Classic Gems”, “An Early American Christmas” and “Christmas in the British Isles”, all published by Mel Bay Publications.
He has shared the stage with Bill Keith, Tony Trischka, Jayme Stone, Alex Hargreaves, Mike Barnett, Jean Marie Redon, Chris Luquette, Scott Law, Steve Kaufman, Henrich Novák, Casey Driessen, Mark Schatz, John Reischman, Emory Lester, Bill Evans and Gerry O'Connor among others.
He runs the Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Festival Al Ras as well as the Barcelona Bluegrass Camp, and also teaches abroad at the prestigious “International Stage Musique Acoustique Campus” in Belgium and other workshops all around the world.
Since 2020 he has been involved in a Zoom call group called “The Flatheads” with banjo players such as Jake Schepps, Adam Larrabee, Hank Smith, Nat Torkington, Tony Trischka, Béla Fleck and others where they discussed the banjo techniques, in addition he has been an assistant teacher for Béla Fleck at the prestigious Blue Ridge Banjo Camp and has taught Banjo Flamenco workshops there.
He currently teaches banjo, mandolin and violin at different schools and plays in several bluegrass, folk, and jazz manouche bands, hosts a bluegrass session in Barcelona, and is also a regular contributor to different media.