Breaking Bach is virtuoso guitarist Chris Newman's fifth solo album. It contains his arrangements for steel-strung flatpicked guitar of sonatas and partitas written by J.S. Bach for solo instruments. The project is quite groundbreaking - a recording of this music on steel-strung flatpicked guitar has not been attempted until now - and is a musical and technical tour-de-force.It was the perfect lockdown undertaking. These sublime pieces could be played entirely solo and there was no shortage of time to explore them in detail. They were written for solo instruments, each note implying both melody and harmony. Chris has developed complex cross-picking techniques to artfully delineate their harmonic shape, making audible what was always implied and thus giving them a new voice.He says: 'Well, this is what I've been up to for the past year or more of enforced gig inactivity. J.S. Bach's compositions are, of course, utterly wonderful and it's been a real pleasure (as well as a challenge) to arrange a dozen of them for a solo flat-picked steel-strung guitar. It's important for me to point out that I am not a classical guitarist: many recordings of this music exist played by really excellent classical (nylon-strung) guitarists who, of course, would never dream of going anywhere near a plectrum, or steel strings. It's been a fun project and I hope people like it.'.Chris is a 'brilliant English master of the acoustic guitar' (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH). He is one of the very few guitarists who excel in Celtic, swing jazz and bluegrass styles. A prolific composer, arranger and record producer, he's played with luminaries of many musical worlds: folk (harper Máire Ní Chathasaigh and Boys of the Lough), jazz (Stephane Grappelli and Diz Disley) and comedy (Fred Wedlock). He received a silver disc for producing Fred's international hit Oldest Swinger in Town, to which he also composed the tune and which reached No 6 in the UK charts and No 1 in several other countries. Appearances on such iconic TV programmes as BBC's Top of the Pops followed. One day in 1985 he decided he'd really rather play interesting music than pursue interesting paychecks, so turned his back on the commercial world and returned to his folk roots.