The opening concert of the Granada Guitar Festival yesterday was a pleasure. The Carlos V palace on the Alhambra grounds is the perfect place for a late evening concert and the music was excellent. The OCG quartet are excellent musicians and joined Pepe Romero for the second half of his concert. I love the guitar and I love chamber music so Boccherini is a perfect union of the two. The Festival continues until the closing concert on August 8. See the full programme here.

It is very clear to me that there are more advantages to setting the back bars into the linings as opposed to removing the lining in that area and glueing a support under the bar. Firstly there is an extra step involved in using a separate support. Secondly those supports are difficult to shape after the fact (the top ones are easy to shape with a bellied chisel if you are putting the top on first and then the back). The last disadvantage has to do with glue squeeze out. A pocket makes a very self contained joint whereas the open lining with the support is open and allows glue flow if you are not very careful, especially if the brace end is high. And that is the problem, I use supports for the back bars on my Torres copies because that is what he did but also because with those unscallopped bars the bar end is too high to allow a pocket with enough support.

This is the Torres bracing from SE 153.

We needed a logo for the Association of Guitar-makers and I had a few offers from web developers and designers but there was really no interest among the members to spend money on that sort of thing. So I thought maybe I could do something:I took a photo of the guitar after wrapping it up in string the way we do to glue the back on. We do this in order to put light pressure on all points of the back and to be able to heat it up afterwards. In this case I wasn’t glueing the back on but rather trying to get the perfect shot so the guitar is a completed one and I didn’t do it on the solera. I was then able to negativize it and clean it up and get rid of the background. Then it was a matter of reducing it to black and white.And of course to find the right orientation. Of course deciding how to do it and trying different photos initially is what took the most time. And here is the final result on a business card. I love it because it really represents us but is simple and aesthetically pleasing.

Flamenco took centre stage on Tuesday at the Town hall and the mayor once again put his support behind culture in Granada. Santiago Benavides and Pepe Luis Carmona are the directors of the “Milnoff Flamenco Festival” which aspires to take its place among the great festivals in Spain. Each day is dedicated to a particular flamenco artist. All of the participating public institutions were represented and professed their dedication to culture and their support for those who need it to make a living. Given the situation due to Covid 19 all events will be free of charge for the public.