The Córdoba Guitar Festival, as most of you know, brings some of the greatest guitarists in the world to stages throughout the city in the month of July.  What you may not know is that each year conferences and seminars are held celebrating one particular figure in the world of the guitar. While these “Jornadas de Estudio” add an intellectual aspect to the festival they would be as ephemeral as the concerts if it were not for the fact that they are published the following year in a monographic book. Last year’s VIP was Miguel Llobet, a spanish guitarist who left his mark on the guitar and its music mostly in the beginning of the 20th century.  The book was presented today in Córdoba and as one of the authors Iwas invited to attend. I have yet to read the book but we were talking about it all day today and it sounds well worth the price. Only published in Spanish of course.  Javier Riba has reproduced the prologue in his blog. Below is a photo by Toni Blanco of Josep María Mangado another of the authors, the head of culture for the city of Córdoba María del Mar Téllez and editor Javier Riba and yours truly. As for the article which I wrote with Antonio Manjón I hope to get permission to translate it from Spanish into English and publish it here. Congratulations are in order to Javier Riba for the excellent job he did as co-ordinator of the seminars as well as editor of the book.

Thursday saw the passing of a flamenco legend:  Juan Carmona. The family has used the nickname of Habichuela for years so he was professionally known as Juan Habichuela or Juan Carmona Habichuela.  Born in 1933 Juan began dancing at the age of ten but turned to the guitar at the age of 15 and quickly gained fame as an accompanyist.

Juan played for singers such as Fosforito, Camarón, Manolo Caracol, Mairena, Bernarda de Utrera and Enrique Morente. These days flamenco guitarrists in general have followed in the footsteps of Paco de Lucia, Vicente Amigo and Gerardo Nuñez in that the instrument is a solo voice or often the focal point of a concert or album.  Juan was old school and for the most part limited himself to accompanying great singers.

Among the recordings made over a life of flamenco are: his first album with Rafael Farina, another with Manolo Caracól, a 1999 album with greats including Paco de Lucia and José Mercé, “Campo del Principe” (2002) with Juanito Valderrama, and Enrique Morente and others, and in 2007 “Una guitarra en Granada”. Juan toured extensively and had played in New York, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Mexico, Bogota and other cities all over the world.

His legacy is the profound respect that his colleagues had for the man and his criteria, the music and of course the saga of artists that follow him: his sons Juan y Antonio and his nephew José Miguel -members of Ketama-, su nephew Pepe Luis, founder of  La Barbería del Sur and his grandson Juan Carmona an excellent guitarist in his own right.

Guitarra en los jardines del Falla.  Falla is the name given to the classical music auditorium here in Granada (Auditorio Manuel de Falla).  This will be the third year that guitar concerts will be offered in the courtyard.  A lovely, cool venue for wonderful music.  Here is the lineup.

14 de julio 2016

Rafael Aguirre

21 de julio 2016

Eduardo Inestal

28 de julio 2016

David Martínez

4 de agosto 2016

Alí Arango

11 de agosto 2016

Liu Xianji (Ganador Concurso Internacional Gredos San Diego (Madrid)

18 de agosto 2016

Javier Conde

25 de agosto 2016

Deion Cho

1 de septiembre 2016

J. Clerch

Visit the webpage for tickets.

One might think that these two makers – the 19th century maker of the first recognizably modern guitar and the most famous maker of the 20th century – made very similar instruments and in general that would be correct.  Both made lightly-built, responsive and beautiful guitars and in general used the integral neck and fan bracing of some description.  However, both makers experimented extensively, Torres with body shape and tornavoz while Santos used many different fan and transverse bar layouts.

I am making one of my very much in demand Torres copies right now alongside a Santos copy which has also proven to be quite successful.  The depth measurements of a guitar body affect the air volume and hence the resonant frequencies, it can make the guitar more or less comfortable for the guitarist to hold and play and of course it changes the aesthetics. This picture shows just what a difference in depth there is between these two models. There are a few other differences as well, the Santos is made with thinner top and sides and the lower transverse bar is placed diagonally.  I had never experimented with that configuration before but I am liking the results.

Alí Arango

Martes 28 junio – 22.00h

Corral del Carbón

Cañizares

Martes 21 junio – 22.30h

Patio de los Arrayanes

Click on the image above for a complete list of all activities.