June 8 was the date for the latest installment of GuitarNcuentrO which is organized by the Conservatory of Music here in Granada and the Association of Guitar Studies. Because of the scheduling we had an excellent turnout to listen to the sound testing of the guitars. I was quite pleased with the quality of the guitars I heard and saw there. I wasn’t able to attend any of the other events but the day was full of seminars and concerts. Next year is apparently going to be bigger and better with conservatories from other countries in attendance. I will do my best to have a guitar available for that.

Arias made some of the most amazing rosettes and also experimented widely with his guitar-making including using double backs, Bouchet-type braces and soundports. However, as this guitar shows he also made guitars in the simplest style which were obviously for more modest clients and he probably made a lot of them. The very plain wood and the simple rosette speak of the type of guitar that the folk players used at the turn of the century. Although this guitar has very old machine heads fitted you can see from the thickness of the head, and from the taper, that it was originally made for wooden pegs. The design of the head slots indicate that the conversion was not done by Arias himself.

I just spent two days in Turin, Italy with guitar-maker Valerio Licari. In addition to making classical guitars and his own Zen model he is a teacher at the Accademia Liuteria Piemontese San Filippo The accademia invited me to talk about the Granada School of Guitar-making on May 17th. My hosts were very gracious and helpful and I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. The installations at the school are excellent and the teaching staff and board members of the association very passionate and committed. I also met Mara Valdarchi, Tommaso Rovetta, Paula Lazzarini and Sebastiano Ferrari. I look forward to more collaborations of this sort. It was enjoyable to pass something on to the students and to hear their questions about Granada and its guitar-making tradition. Paula had spent some time in Granada a few years ago but we hadn’t met so it was nice to finally meet her and to exchange opinions with her.

John Ray, Valerio Licari, Tomasso Rovetta, Paula Lazzarini

Turin is an interesting city with its varied architecture and curious history. The Egytian Museum exists there because of a belief that the city had egyptian origins and Turin was the intellectual centre of the risorgimiento which resulted in the unification of Italy. This unified italian kingdom had its capital in Turin.

On Friday May 10, Granada lost one more of the master guitar-makers who made this city great. Pepe López was a special person, generous, sociable, affectionate and totally in love with the guitar and his profession. But he also valued many things outside the sphere of the guitar. One of the few guitar-makers who decided to retire and sell his workshop in order to rest and enjoy life in his later years. I wrote here about his retirement party back in 2018.  Pepe was one of the founding members of the Escuela granadina de guitarreros and worked hard for the recognition of this craft.

I would like to highlight two aspects of his personality. First, he always supported any event or proposal related to the guitar in Granada and was enthusiastic about new makers in town. Personally I always felt like he was on my side if I proposed or organized anything. And his love for his family, something I often saw manifested in the obvious affection he felt for his nieces and nephews.