World’s best guitarist

After a season away from home, I could go back to enjoy again the CD’s that I like. I felt it’s important, now that I have a blog that reaches so many different people, sharing the music of the best guitarist I have ever listen to.

When I was 25 years old and with my new career, I was surrounded by musicians who were not guitarists but singers, flautists or tiorbists, at that time interested on early music, hitherto little known in Barcelona. A good day, one of them told me that in Madrid was an exceptional guitarist who played Sors with a romantic guitar. She also said that he made himself the instruments along with his wife (the luthier Lourdes Uncilla), and that was devoted to the musical research of Sors and other ancient authors. He was the guitarist Jose Miguel Moreno.

That same summer I went to Madrid to study with him, and the impression I had still lingers. At that time I had played Sors many times, but never had listened to something similar. His sentence was clear. His music was pasioned and palpable as life or land. At present, I still missing words to define that feelings. For the first time, I understood the music of Sors.

Of course, I also tried to play Sors in that way. But soon I realized that I could not. Neither with 25 years or 45. I still keep trying phrasing like him, be as descriptive.

After several years I finally buy a romantic guitar from Lourdes. I hope to use it for the next session. But for the moment, you can to listen here a fragment from Sylvius Leopold Weiss “ciacona”, a baroque lute included on his “Ars Melanchloliae”, in my opinion, the best CD ever recorded.

This blog has migrated

I’m moving to a self-hosted space (powered by Bluehost, which is a reliable company)

Blog is growing and we decided to migrate to wordpress.org, which permits a wide range of possibilities, specially with podcasts.

This “old blog” will reamain active for a month or so.

You will found the new location at:

Para las seis cuerdas

And as usually, you will found the Guitar Course on

Montse Guitar Sessions, online guitar course

Death of a poet: Palau i Fabre

Josep Palau i Fabre, poet and a main expert on Picasso, has died.

While this is relative, as a poet lives every time we read his poems. For me is a special one as I have had opportunity to put music to accompany his poems in several performances. And every time, it has been a impressive moment. The words and the music, a strong combination. Hard sensations. Great moments.

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Canciones Populares harmonized by Lorca

Here you can (partially) listen to the interpretation of “La Argentinita” and Lorca at the piano, of the song “Café de Chinitas” which recounts a discussion between two bullfighters Gypsies brothers about who was the most courageous. As you can see, really a Spanish commonplace. The “Cafe de Chinitas” was a coffeehouse that actually existed in the city of Málaga, and Paquiro, the ” torero”, perhaps was not a Gypsy and sure died not in the street, but he was a bullfight legend in the nineteen century.

El Café de Chinitas [1:22m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup |

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First Technnique Session launched

Last week we have been working in a Podcast, not like the last, but devoted to a “hard”, technique session. It represents the first issue for a course oriented to people that already plays guitar and want to improve it. You will found that option at montseguitarsessions.com

“Duel”, contemporary guitar

It is not easy to express my feelings about so-called Contemporary Music. Oddly enough, it produces quite different feelings when played or when listened to as a member of the public.

Just when I had almost finished my studies, I started going to a bar which was right at the centre of hip Barcelona, called Nick Havanna , where every week there was a contemporary music concert. We went there for the sake of being the most modern. Or perhaps, because what I wanted was to play there at any price.

In any case, the result is that we heard a lot of contemporary music, to the point where I think we got to be able to know which musicians were interesting, and which were not. It’s very easy. Music, if it is good, always conquests you. In the words of Monique Deschaussés, “Music goes to the ear through sounds that impress man in the depths of their sensitivity, even reaching their nerve centres.”

Clearly, I prefer to play Contemporary Music than to listen it. I enjoy it more, because before playing it, it is necessary to interiorise it. It gives a sense of freedom. It reaches my inside by a new path, which has nothing to do with logic, because one never knows what will follow. It always surprises me.

Duel. Guitar duo by Joan Guinjoan (1976)

Here you can listen to the final part of a guitar duet called “Duel”. Somehow, it represents a “clash” between two guitars. I like it a lot, I have such a good time when playing it. While it may seem that we are improvising, everything is written in the score, which is quite different from a conventional one. My partner in this performance was the outstanding guitarist María José Santos.

The composer is Joan Guinjoan, in my opinion, the foremost Spanish musician at present. We were lucky to play this piece for him, in a concert devoted to his works at the Conservatori de Barcelona. While this guitar duo was active, some three years, we played in a wide variety of places in Spain, always including Duel in the repertoire. After every concert, the most frequent comment was “a good recital, except for that really weird piece before the interval…” What do you think?

A concert in Cáceres

I’ve just returned from a concert in this beautiful city and I want to tell you about pleasant feelings produced by a walk through the cobbled streets, almost always silent. The old city, although less well known than other Spanish cities, has an impressive urban heritage, highlighted by many Renaissance palaces and the harmony of the whole.

 

All these palaces are “casas blasonadas”, that is, houses with stone coat of arms. You can visit one of these which is kept in perfect condition, “La Casa de los Becerra”, a kind of museum that houses an interesting collection of antiques. But really the best thing to do in Càceres is to take a stoll as we did. Here you can see one of these palaces, la Torre de los Golfines de Abajo.

 

 

 

During the concert, I noticed that most of the public were elderly. That is becoming normal lately, especially when I play with a singer. Perhaps it isn’t important, but I am concerned about young people moving away from classical music.