Charles Edward Azzolina-Michlin
A little history…
I was brought up in a house of music. My “uncle” was a man named Edward Freeman whose house was full of guitar lessons, guitar building and Flamenco performances. He and my father were close friends. Weekend evenings were open house for Flamenco juergas. Regular guests had their own beverage bottles in the cupboard, the owners name written on a piece of tape, most were whiskey. There was an entire shelf of them. It was crowded, clouds of cigarette smoke and the explosive sounds of Flamenco – guitars, singing, dancing, and palmas. I was six years old before I was allowed a 3/4 size guitar and formal lessons. Once my studies began I was allowed to be in the workshop and watch Eddie build guitars. This fascinated me and over the years I would sit in his tiny shop watching raw wood become beautiful musical instruments.
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- Eddie`s workshop
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- Eddie listening to a student
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- Xmas 72
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- Paco, Tom and my mom
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- Freeman
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- Freeman
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- Freeman
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- Freeman
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- Xmas 72
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- Christmas 1972
Click here for more information about Eddie Freeman
I asked for a guitar at four years of age and began classical and Flamenco formal study at six. I studied trumpet for two years beginning at the age of ten. During this time I flirted with the drums in the band room and at twelve got a 5 piece trap set and began drumming which continued four years through high school. At fourteen began the study of acoustic finger style guitar and the physics of acoustics. At seventeen, the beginning of St. John’s College, I traded the trap set for a vintage Martin guitar. St. John’s was the study of Liberal Arts through classical literature: the original works of Euclid, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus etc… – which translates roughly into the history of western thought. At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Aeronautical Science was the major which led to becoming an airline transport pilot and instructor in Airplanes, Helicopters and Gliders. I began soldering and modifying audio gear during helicopter flight school (1984).
The flying career took me from USA, Ireland, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Mozambique, Djibouti, Seychelles, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Romania, and Indonesia. This included African field operations for foreign aid (GTZ, UNDP, UNESCO, UNISEF, MSF, WWF, ICRC and other NGO’s), Emergency Medical Services & Sea Search and Rescue. Factory Test Pilot & Instructor with Bell Helicopter, Kawasaki Helicopters and Dornier Flugzeugwerke.
I began designing and building tube amplifiers and horn speakers in 1994 and started a small company with these products in 1998. The company continued in parallel with the flying career until I retired from flying in 2016.
We moved to countryside France, and began full time development of our current products.
In 2021 we moved to the furniture production region of Northern Portugal to a city listed as an Unesco City of Music.
My wife Camila and I live among vineyards with two 140m² workshops dedicated to music reproduction design and manufacture. Our team consists of my wife, Camila, architect and designer, Joabe, CNC specialist and funiture maker, and myself.
Our focus is to reanimate recorded music; to bring the dedicated lives, the hard work and human emotion out of the grooves and back to life.
