Back around the 1970’s a trend started affirming that the classical literature for guitar (I mean Sor, Giuliani and several others, just in case you ignorants don’t know what I am talking about) was passé, because 1) it was not up to the standards of Beethoven or Mozar...

Allá por los 1970, se hizo fuerte una tendencia que sostiene que la literatura clásica para guitarra (quiero decir Sor, Giuliani y varios otros, por si ustedes ignorantes no saben de qué hablo) estaba perimida, porque: 1) no estaba a la altura de Beethoven o Mozart (d...

 (Photo: Achraf Baznani)

This pretends to be some incoherent, contradictory, maybe trivial and probably ineffectual but well-meant advice and warnings about entering competitions.

I have been quite often in juries of international guitar competitions, which might...

Otro tema, o no tan otro. Quien quiera pensarlo en serio, puede consultar al gran Carlos Vega aquí.  Se trata de algunos usos lingüísticos (locales y bastante recientes pero dominantes) que me tienen un poco harto, como el denominar lo que uno hace “música académica” (...

 (text written as an obit for the German magazine "Gitarre und Laute")

Photo by Alfonso de Béjar

1.    Carlevaro is playing his “Preludios Americanos” on TV. I am about ten years old, and I have never seen anything remotely like this, although my father has taken me to...

When we listen, we do not feel an isolated sound event as musical. I mean, maybe because I am a guitarist and we cannot produce loooong sounds, an event of relatively short duration. Obviously, a single sound that lasts ten minutes or ten seconds,  and changes of colou...