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.

Once again the Fundación Andrés Segovia has asked for my help in the restoration of one of their guitars. It seems that Hermann Hauser I made a number of guitars for Segovia and this one is probably the last. Although Hauser’s son was probably working with him at this time this instrument has the characteristics of the father’s work including french polish and the top bracing. The guitar was in very good condition except for two previously repaired cracks in the back one of which had re-opened and extended to the entire length of the back and a very well repaired crack in the top. The stylistic aspects of the guitar are also very typical of Hauser with a nice cut of Brazilian rosewood and a bearclaw spruce top. Purfling is the white-green-white elegant lines that he so often used and the headstock is the Torres shape but quite short.

For restorations I always try to do as little as possible in an attempt to conserve the sound and the style of the makers original work. Thankfully I did not have to do any work on the top and most of what I did was to prevent further damage and to eliminate vibrations by glueing loose pieces. The guitar is now back in Linares and hopefully very soon on display.

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On March 20 I travelled to Madrid to make a presentation about Santos Hernández the great guitar-maker. I was invited thanks to the study I made of his 1924 guitar which had belonged to Andrés Segovia. That was back in 2015 and was published in Roseta magazine. Below is the poster for the event and as you can see Javier Somoza, Joan Pellisa and Cristina Bordás also participated. Javier knows exactly how to make that guitar sound great and told us a little about Andrés Segovia and his intentions in donating different guitars to various museums. Joan has been studying the tools and jigs that are conserved from Santos’ workshop and has reached some interesting conclusions about how Santos worked and why. As for Cristina’s presentation I was very interested in her analysis of “Cultura Material” which is something I was not familiar with.

The next day I was able to visit the Historical Museum of Madrid and see the two guitars they have on display there, Juan Moreno and Hijos de González. Thanks Raquel. And thank you to Inmaculada Seldas from the Musical Library and the organizers of Symphonos Festival. I also visited Yunah Park on the same trip. I have known her for years and greatly respect her work but I had never managed to see her workshop, a great pleasure.