Marcin Patrzalek

The one-man band

At only 20 years old, Polish prodigy Marcin Patrzalek has already built up an impressively sizeable profile online, thanks to his genre-crossing rearrangements of classical masterpieces including Moonlight Sonata. He started out on classical at 10 years old, winning his first competitions only months later, before moving onto flamenco and percussive fingerstyle.

In 2019, he appeared in front of Simon Cowell and his co-judge son America’ s got talent, splicing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with parts of Toxicity by Armenian-American metallers System Of A Down on mainstream television. The clip soon went viral across the world.

More recently, he’s struck a deal with Sony – who have given him the budget to bring his ideas to life, each tallying millions of views on Youtube and hundreds of thousands elsewhere, blending elements of hip-hop and electronica with more guitar-led influences.

His latest video sees him tackling Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir as a one-man band, exploring every inch of his Ibanez acoustic melodically and rhythmically with some truly mind-blowing results. “My goal is to show the world – not only musicians and guitarists – that percussive acoustic should be the next big thing,” he tells TG. Whatever he’s doing, it definitely seems to be working.

“On America’s got talent, Marcin spliced Beethoven’s Fifth with Toxicity”