New World Record for Largest Guitar Ensemble


And the new world record holder for the World's Largest Guitar Ensemble is... the same people who held the old record! Congratulations are in order for music teacher Leszek Cichonski, founder of Poland's "Thanks Jimi Festival" and the 7,273 guitar players who broke their own record this week.

The previous record was set at the same festival in 2009 with 6,346 guitarists. At that event, Deep Purple's Steve Morse led the guitarmy in a rendition of the Jimi Hendrix classic, "Hey Joe". This time around, Jimi's brother Leon Hendrix had the honor of doing so.



Over 7,000 axe slingers is an incredibly impressive number to draw. Once upon a time, (June of 07 to be exact) I was a part of a similar event held in Kansas City, KS, where 1,683 of us set a new world record (at that time) for the world's Largest Guitar Ensemble. It was one of the most fun music events I've been involved with and was quite surreal as we took over the outfield of a minor league baseball stadium to break the record by playing Deep Purple's four-chord classic, "Smoke on the Water". Obviously that number has been smashed multiple times since then. Major props to the guitar players of Poland who demonstrated what an incredible unifying power music can be.



Here is the video of the Kansas City event. You can see a passing glimpse of yours truly around the 7:36 mark. So. Much. Fun! \m/




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