Ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your chisels!

The guitar-making competition is back and this year will be held in October over the 17th to the 19th of October. Most of the same jury members are back and previous first prize winners are not allowed to participate. The prizes are similar to last year’s and I am hoping that there will be as many participants as previous editions. The competition is a great idea and has the potential to become even greater. I have enjoyed meeting the guitar greats who come to be part of the jury, the participants and the many who come to hear all of the guitars.

http://www.europeanguitarfoundation.com/IV-ANTONIO-MARIN-GUITAR-MAKING-COMPETITION-2021/2021-RULES

New edition of Milnoff Flamenco Festival. Click on the poster for more information. The local newspaper has this to say: Granada Hoy

1922 refers to the year that the Concurso de Cante Jondo was organised in Granada by Manuel de Falla and others including Federíco García Lorca. For more information on that historic event click here.

I received this book today and I am very excited to get a start on it. Arias, at least to the guitar-playing public, was indeed the forgotten maker until the early part of this century when things started to change. Siegfried Hogenmüller and Stefano Grondona were particularly influential in the resurgence of interest in the figure of Arias. My first experience with Arias was a guitar which Javier Riba brought to my workshop immediately after purchasing it. I remember the look of terror on his face when I began examining the guitar and said “Oh my god!”. He thought I had discovered some fault in it when in reality I had discovered the double back which was not noticeable from the outside. That guitar, from 1900 is an incredible instrument and its quality has caused me to seek out information about and guitars made by Vicente Arias.

This book is the first comprehensive work dealing with the life and the guitars of this great builder. At this point I have only flipped through it admiring the incredible photography and layout but I know that I will love it. I love the detailed photographs of the different rosettes and the plans of 4 Arias guitars; one of them included full size. Congratulations to Alberto and Clémentine Martínez. Get yours now. CaminoVerde.

If there is one city in the world which deserves a great guitar festival, a guitar museum, a prestigious competition for guitarists and another competition for guitar-makers it is Granada. Granada and the guitar go back centuries and even today there are over 30 guitar-makers in the city and 20 more in the other towns in the province of Granada. The conservatory has one of the oldest guitar programs in Andalucia and of course some very illustrious guitarists came from or have come to live in Granada. Manuel Cano Tamayo, Andrés Segovia, Ángel Barrios, Pepe Cuéllar, Vicente el Granaíno, Francisco Rodríguez Murciano, David Martínez, Marcus Toscano, Alfredo Mesa, Alberto López, Álvaro Martinete, José Fermín Fernández, Pepe Romero, Vicente Coves, Elliot Fisk, the Habichuela family greats, Miguel Ochando, Luis Mariano, and many more.

Well, in 2017 Granada got its guitar festival and a guitar-making competition thanks to Vicente Coves and the 5th edition of the festival has just been announced. One of the most prestigious guitar-playing competitions in the world is named after Andrés Segovia and takes place in a town on the Granada coast so all we need now is a museum which can preserve the unbroken line of instrument-makers from the 12th century.

So today let’s celebrate the festival and the guitar-making competition. The competition has brought makers to Granada from Japan, China, Thailand, Germany, USA, Italy, France, all parts of Spain and from many other countries. Concerts during past editions have been offered by Margarita Escarpa, Pepe Romero, the LA guitar quartet, José Miguel Moreno, Rafael Aguirre, Alexei Khorev, Javier Riba, Mabel Millán, Juan Habichuela Nieto and many, many more. There is no date yet for the guitar-making competition but here you can find the programme for this year’s festival. The photo shows programming from the first three editions. I didn’t save anything from the fourth.