2025 Bessaraboff Prize awarded to James Westbroook

The American Musical Instrument Society has chosen James Westbrook’s Guitar Making in Nineteenth-Century London: Louis Panormo and his Contemporaries (Halesowen: ASG Music Limited, 2023) to receive the society’s Bessaraboff prize. The committee described the book as “a masterful accomplishment that testifies to a lifetime dedicated to the guitar,” providing the reader insight into the most productive era of British guitar making. "The author’s meticulous attention to organological detail attests to his expertise, illustrated by the book’s 370 color pictures[, and] the book’s directory of London-based guitar makers sets a new standard for encyclopedic compendia of makers,” the committee wrote. The book is "sure to become the standard reference on nineteenth-century London guitar making."

Bessaraboff Prize committee: Matthew Zeller (chair), Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford, Emily Dolan