Archive for April, 2012
Coming Soon – Graciliano Perez Negra
We just got photos of a new cedar-top negra that Graciliano Perez from Cordoba is about to send us. Graciliano has just finished the French polishing and will glue on the bridge this week. This guitar is very similar to one he just made for Vicente Amigo and delivered to him a few weeks ago, so this is pretty much the sister guitar to that one.
If you hang out at the Conde shop in Madrid long enough you’ll meet just about every great flamenco player alive, so for the past year or so Felipe Conde has been shooting video of some of the amazing players who come in to his shop, including guys like Tomatito (and his son, in the photo), Pepe Habichuela, Rafael Riqueñi, Antonio Rey and more. Here are a few of Felipe’s recent videos.
Guitar #140, made in 2008, was Pepe Jr.’s first koa guitar, and he has gone on to make many more since. And of course Pepe Jr. has also gone on to make koa Ukuleles that are now being bought and played by many of the great Ukulele players in the world, including Jake Shimabukuro and Jack Johnson. Here’s Pepe Sr. playing more of Tarrega’s ‘Capricho Arabe’ at our celebration of Pepe Jr.’s 200th guitar last year.
Here are two more videos we shot last week with Tariq Harb. Tariq played the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 on a gorgeous 2008 cedar-top Edmund Blochinger and some of the Aranjuez on a 1931 Domingo Esteso. The Esteso is a little smaller than some modern guitars, and Tariq wasn’t expecting much out of this little guitar, but when he picked it up and started playing the Aranjuez you could just see his amazement at the response he got from this little cannon.
In a previous ‘Coming Soon’ post about our new guitar from Italian luthier Lorenzo Frignani I had posted some photos of the guitar in progress and of another guitar Frignani had made. Well here are photos of the actual guitar, a recreation of a well-played 1910 Manuel Ramirez guitar (hence the label), that is on its way to GSI. Continue reading to see the photo gallery.
Tariq Harb is a young Jordanian guitarist living in Canada who last year won first prize in the first two competitions he ever entered: The Barrios WorldWideWeb competition and the Montreal International Classical Guitar competition. And he’s been playing classical guitar for less than 7 years! Tariq was in Los Angeles for a few days this week, so we took the opportunity to record a few videos as well as an interview, all of which follow here. Continue reading to watch the interview, as well as Tariq playing Barrios’ ‘Confesión’ on an Otto Vowinkel guitar (he has one himself) and the Allemande from Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 on a 2002 Edmund Blochinger spruce-top. We’ll be posting more videos of Tariq this week, so stay tuned.
Here’s guitar #130 from our celebration of luthier Pepe Romero Jr.’s 200th guitar at the Guitar Salon International showroom. Pepe Jr. made #130 after completing construction on four unfinished Miguel Rodriguez guitars and this was his first ‘Rodriguez’ model, with aesthetics modeled after Rodriguez’ guitars, and it has a cedar top and rosewood back and sides. Pepe Sr. plays some of Tarrega’s Capricho Arabe on it.
Jazz/Fusion legend Lee Ritenour (who bought his Ramirez at GSI) stopped by the showroom this week to tell us about this year’s 6 String Theory Competition, which features prizes including a full-ride Berklee scholarship, instruments, and more for guitarists as well as rhythm section players. Go to 6 String Theory for more information, but watch the video to learn about the competition, prizes and the new extended deadline for entry.
There are a few categories for guitar entries, but the winner of the classical/flamenco category gets some great prizes even before going to compete for the overall guitar prize. Prizes for the classical/flamenco category include $2,500 cash, $500 towards travel to Big Fork Montana the last week in August for the Crown Of The Continent Guitar Festival and all fees and food and lodging paid at the festival.
In fact, they are giving away a total of 36 scholarships to the National Guitar Workshop in Montana to the 36 semi-finalists, which not only makes being a semi-finalist pretty cool, but should make the National Guitar Workshop an amazing place to be this year. The finals for the guitar competition will be held at the festival. Not too shabby, so get your entries in by the new, extended, May 10 deadline (which Lee announces in our video).
Continue reading to see the video.
We’ll have our first guitar soon from Italian luthier Lorenzo Frignani. This guitar will be a Manuel Ramirez replica that, when new, looks like an older, well-played Manuel Ramirez. The first gallery of photos is of Lorenzo making our guitar, and the second gallery is of a completed Manuel Ramirez model. Continue reading to see the photos.
**Update – we have photos of the actual guitar Frignani made for GSI – here’s the link to those**
We have a guitar coming in about a month from German builder Jochen Rothel. This will be a spruce and rosewood guitar and Rothel was kind enough to send some really cool photos of the guitar being built. Continue reading to see the photo gallery.
