Guitar: Fleta About the artist: Nicholas Petrou is considered by many to be one of the world's leading classical guitarists. Born in Greece, he was inspired to study the guitar at the age of 13 after hearing the recordings of Andrés Segovia, a life-long influence. His first and only teacher was not a guitarist but a high school music teacher and composer, Vasilis Daramaras. Nicholas Petrou decided early on to explore his instrument as an autodidact and within two years of taking up the guitar, he was astounding listeners with his natural facility and his readings of some of Bach's most difficult fugues. By the age of 16, he was performing in public and had mastered much of the standard guitar repertoire. In the mid-1970s, he entered the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music (now Sydney Conservatorium), where he completed his studies with Distinction without the aid of a formal guitar teacher. His major influence during that period was the performance aesthetic of the great Soviet pianist, Sviatoslav Richter, whom he considered a consummate technician and a master interpreter. In 1979, Nicholas Petrou was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship to study overseas. He participated in master classes with Andrés Segovia, Leo Brouwer, Antonio Lauro, Alirio Diaz and John Williams. After receiving prizes in international guitar competitions in Milan in 1979, Barcelona in 1981 and Benicasim in 1983, he was engaged as a soloist with leading orchestras across Europe and performed solo recitals both in Europe and Australia. Nicholas Petrou's performances have been broadcast frequently on Radio Suisse Romande and on Australian radio and television. He has received international critical acclaim for his recordings of works by Agustin Barrios, Hector Villa-Lobos and Frank Martin. Nicholas Petrou has also published a number of transcriptions for the guitar for Schott. In order to prepare for a series of recordings of his repertoire in the early 1990s, he discontinued performing in public. Unfortunately, he was then diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis (including finger nail psoriasis) and forced to stop playing. From 1994 to 2005, he was Professor of Guitar at the Geneva Conservatorium. At the end of 2005 he moved to Sydney, Australia. During a period of remission from his arthritic disorder in 2011, he was able to play the guitar again and took the opportunity to make videos of parts of his concert repertoire. He is currently preparing a series of transcriptions for the guitar for publication and producing CDs of his live and studio performances.