Albrecht „Abi“

Albrecht “Abi” was born in Munich, the son of Dietrich Reininghaus and Hildegard Schütz (*Teisendorf 27.10.1926 / † Fürstenfeldbruck 9.11.2019). He spent the first years of his life together with his brother Hubertus “Hubs”, who was three years older, in his parents’ house in Mauern, Fürstenfeldbruck district. From the age of eleven and ten respectively, both brothers were placed in the Hohenschwangau state school near Füssen.

When his wish for an acoustic guitar was fulfilled at the age of 13, he taught himself to play over the following years. In Kelkheim, Hesse, the next stop on his school career, he performed self-written songs in the local jazz club as a teenager. During his school years, he earned his pocket money first as an assembly worker and later as a truck driver for a Frankfurt trade fair construction company. He was a member of the Zeilsheim and Kelkheim boxing clubs and received his professional boxing license at the age of 18. In 1978, he began giving guitar lessons himself.

In 1981, after graduating from high school, he returned to Bavaria and first studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and then business administration at the LMU Munich. However, his passion for music soon drew him to Los Angeles to the Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT), where he focused on the electric guitar. His teachers included Charlie Fechter, Dan Gilbert, Robben Ford, Duane Deyo, Ron Eschete, Joe Diorio, Steve Trovato, Keith Wyatt and Carl Schroeder. Back in Munich, he was a lecturer at the Munich Guitar Institute (MGI) from 1984 to 1992.

He met his wife Ulrike “Rike” (née Arntz) in 1990 and they married in 1991. Their children Clara and Vincent were born in 1993 and 1996.

As an electric guitar endorser, he organized various workshops throughout Germany from 1992 onwards and performed regularly at the Frankfurt Music Fair, for which he had to climb over the fence secretly as a 15-year-old due to a lack of entrance fees.

From June 1991 to May 2001, he wrote the column In Vivo Guitar for the trade magazine Gitarre & Bass, which he continued in a similar form from 2006 to 2008 under the title Abilities in Guitar magazine. From this column, the idea for an electric guitar textbook with the same title was born. It was published by Voggenreiter Verlag in 1993 and has since been reprinted twice. At the same time, he released the self-composed solo album King of Heart with 12 instrumental pieces in 1993. An extended version with 4 additional bonus tracks followed in 2009. This CD was not only close to his heart musically, but also personally. He dedicated it to his brother Hubertus, who had committed suicide at the age of 22 at the end of 1978.

In 2003 he founded the A-Team-Academy in Munich, where he passed on both his theoretical knowledge and his practical experience as a lecturer. Also since 2003, he has been a member and guitarist of the band Jazzmachine, which released the CD Radio in the same year, and played all the guitar parts on the album A Tribute to Simon & Garfunkel by the band Die Singphoniker. In 2008, he produced the Jazzmachine follow-up album Moongroove together with Stefan Zaradic (with Andreas Keller, Thorsten Skringer and Ana Patan, among others).

He has published articles in two books: Holländische Tomaten und Popmusik (Macht Musik, 2005 Wienand Verlag) and Classical Music, Jazz, Rock, Pop – What’s the Difference? (Satchmo meets Amadeus, 2006 im Studien Verlag). Since 2005 he has been running the company Audio-Brand-Management as a management consultant and product and brand developer for national and international clients such as SynthAxe, Akai, Intel, Gibson, Roland, Klotz and Schaller.

In August 2009, he played the German national anthem on his electric guitar in front of around 50,000 spectators during the NitrOlympX drag racing event at the Hockenheimring; arranged and produced by himself. Since 2024, he has been sharing his personal experiences as a guitarist and lecturer on his personal YouTube channel in entertaining videos. At the same time, he is working with a partner on the development of a new type of electric guitar amplifier under the name InVivo Amplification.