Andrea Tacchi (born 28 July 1956) is an Italian luthier who specializes in classical guitar making.
Biography
Born and raised in Florence, Italy, Tacchi took an interest in creating musical instruments from an early age, building his first guitar at age 15. In 1977, he began studying guitar making with Argentinian luthier Ricardo Brané. After Brané’s death, Tacchi traveled to Spain, England, France, and the United States to study with various masters, going in 1981 to Spain to meet with many Spanish luthiers including Paulino Bernabe Senior, José Ramírez, Francisco and Gabriel Fleta to get their critical opinions and advice on his guitar making. With the same goal in mind, he went twice to England to consult with José Romanillos.
Most importantly, during the early 1980s, Tacchi went several times to Paris to visit with Robert Bouchet and Daniel Friederich in their workshops, always with the objective in mind of growing as a luthier through their advice. In Castres, France in 1985, Tacchi competed in the "Concours International des Facteurs de Guitare" organized by Robert Vidal of Radio France. There, he won first prize for Aesthetic Qualities and second general prize for Acoustic Qualities.
Experienced in the restoration of guitars and other antique string instruments, Tacchi has carried out such restorations as the Pagés guitar of Jacob Lindberg, string basses for musicians of the Teatro Comunale di Firenze, and a classical guitar built by Hermann Hauser.
Tacchi has built over 350 guitars, some owned by guitarists including Filomena Moretti, Flavio Cucchi, Carlo Marchione, Antigoni Goni, Robert Gruca, Colin Davin, Minoru Inagaki, and Marcelo Kayath, while others belong to important private collections. Two of his guitars are in the collection of the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence, Italy.
Coclea & Coclea Thucea
Tacchi is well known for a guitar he began building in 1989, the Coclea, which possesses unusually resonant acoustic properties. The name refers to the "cochlea" of the inner ear (coclea in Latin), the physiological place where noise is perceived as sound. The Coclea is designed on precise geometrical principles, of which its main characteristic is having top and back conceived of as portions of spheres of different radii. Tacchi explains his inspiration for the Coclea: "From the early 80s on, I became interested in understanding the rules adopted by luthiers of the 19th century for designing the form of their instruments, a series of circles and triangles in a mathematical relation to the length of the body. Then I developed a system of spheres of differing diameters and planes in such a way so that these tangents would compose the Coclea."
While he originally created two versions of the Coclea, one with a spruce top and another with a cedar top, it was in 1997 that Tacchi began to develop the idea for the Coclea Thucea, so named because of the combination of the two woods of which the sound board is composed: thuja plicata (western redcedar) and picea excelsa (spruce). Tacchi's Thucea design was partially inspired by a concept applied by Antonio Torres who created guitar soundboards with three strips of spruce of differing densities. He produced the first Coclea Thucea in 2000.
In 2012, Tacchi created a special model of the Coclea Thucea named "Cerulea." Destined for China, the predominant color of the decoration is cerulean blue, inspired by the image of the celestial empire. In the rosette there is a square tile of blue lapis lazuli and as 2012 was the year of the Dragon there is another tile representing a dragon carved from an antique piece of bone.
Bouchet Homage
In honor of his former teacher, in 1994 Andrea Tacchi created his first reproduction of a Bouchet guitar, the Bouchet Homage. Following the Cahier d’atelier (workshop notebook) of Bouchet, later published by the Conservatoire de Paris, Tacchi created what is generally recognized as a personalized replica of the master’s instrument.
In 1998 the Florentine luthier was invited to exhibit this guitar in Shibuya, Tokyo at the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of Bouchet’s birth. Concerning Bouchet, Tacchi has written: "He linked the 'gesture' with the material, a characteristic typical of sculptors, and one ought not to forget that Bouchet started out as both a painter and a sculptor."