Clive Carroll

Acclaimed guitarist and composer Clive Carroll has created a sound world all his own, with a signature blend of warmth and humour that belies his dazzling technical skill.

Clive Carroll’s masterful compositions feature influences mined from the delicate cadences of Elizabethan lute classics, the imaginative eccentricity of Frank Zappa, visionary classical composers such as Bartok and Ligeti, and hints of jazz and Delta blues.

Clive made his musical debut at age two as a banjo-strumming cowboy singing nursery rhymes, and went on to earn a first class honours degree in composition and guitar from Trinity College of Music in London – all the while balancing his classical work with forays into the world of the steel string guitar and beyond. He has toured and worked with guitar greats such as John Renbourn, John Williams, Tommy Emmanuel, Xuefei Yang, and Ralph Towner – as well as pop icon, Madonna.

In 2000, Acoustic Guitar Magazine called Clive, “Probably the best and most original young acoustic guitarist/composer in Britain”, and, in the 2021 article “Best Acoustic Guitarists in the World Right Now”, Total Guitar magazine described Clive as, “…arguably the most accomplished fingerstylist in the world today”.