I hadn’t planned to attend the last concert of the Granada Guitar Festival but in the end I am very glad I did. Alexei is an excellent player and I enjoyed his programme very much. The Tarrega and the Rodrigo were particularily good. An excellent, very musical player and also technically very perfect. We enjoyed a drink afterwards and celebrated the success of the Festival. Alexei plays a french-made double-top guitar but was asked by a Granada maker (Pavel Gavryushov) to play two pieces on his guitar and kindly did so. Today Manuel de Falla auditorium, tomorrow the world. Viva la escuela granadina!

Sergio Valverde of Mecina Bombarón (province of Granada) has won the gold medal in the Antonio Marín international guitar-making competition. Two silver medals were awarded: Julia Wenzel of Germany and Oscar Muñoz from Cajar (province of Granada) as a testament to the unexpectedly high quality of the instruments submitted for judgement. The Competition was a huge success as was the entire festival which ends on November 3 with a concert by Alexei Khorev. I took this photo on the first day of the judging and as luck would have it the future winners were standing together. From left to right: Oscar Muñoz, Sergio Valverde and Julia Wenzel.

So far I have been very impressed with the thoroughness and fairness of the jury of this guitar competition. The other great thing has been the very high quality of the guitars in general. On the second morning we learned the results of the first screening with the following makers having their guitars pass on to the semifinals.

Mario Aracama                                                                                                                     Julio.Baarslag                                                                                                                       Arcadio Marín                                                                                                         Francisco Javier Muñoz                                                                                                    Oscar Muñoz                                                                                                               Marín Nejime                                                                                                                Huang Pan                                                                                                                  Sergio Valverde                                                                                                                 Julia Wenzel

After another day of public trials and deliberation the jury decided on five instruments to participate in the final to be held in the concert hall of the Federico García Lorca centre. The video shows the secretary of the jury announcing the five finalists: Mario Aracama, Oscar Muñoz, Marín Nejime, Sergio Valverde and Julia Wenzel.

In my mind Casa Ferrer is very important in Granada’s history because of the number of makers who started out in its workshops. There is no way there would be so many guitar-makers in Granada if Benito, Eduardo and Antonio Durán had not hired those workers. The latest generation to take the reins of the business is Ana Durán Ferrer and I was lucky enough to find here there on Friday when I went up the hill to check out the Casa Ferrer Exhibition. I was impressed with the layout of the exhibition as well as with the specific pieces in it. Ana walked me through the space and told us some stories and specifics which I appreciated greatly.

This exhibition not only treats the origins of the history of the Casa Ferrer but also the pre-history. It seems that the bandurria played by Benito Ferrer was made by Antonio del Valle and when it collapsed under the tension of the metal strings he took it to José Ortega for advice. Thus began a collaboration which gave Benito the knowledge he needed to start his journey as a guitar-maker.

Flamenco and Classical guitars ready to be evaluated by the jury. Yesterday afternoon we heard all 17 guitars and the jury had some time as well to examine the workmanship and aesthetics of the guitars. They will continue their labour today and announce which guitars will be passing on to the second phase. The photo below shows jury members on the right and participants on the left with representatives from the Granada town council. There are five guitar-makers from the province of Granada participating, two from Málaga, three from Madrid, one from Barcelona, one from Sevilla and the international participants include a maker from Portugal, one from Germany two from China and one from Japan. The quality of the guitars is quite high overall and in the listening tests I heard a very few sub-par instruments and two or three that seemed a head above the rest, mostly in terms of the beauty of the sound. It is exciting to see so many makers and to meet Illustrious members of the guitar world like Manuel Caceres, Edmund Blöchinger and Pepe Romero. The guitars were played by Florian Blöchinger (classicals) and Luis Mariano (flamencos).