2025 Rojas & Sanzol SP/CY

This 2025 Rojas & Sanzol is a flamenco guitar in Val di Fiemme spruce and Greek cypress from the Argentinian couple Matías Rojas and Carmen Sanzol, who work in Italy's Val Trebbia and won Third Prize in Granada's 2024 flamenco competition.

A Santos-Inspired Flamenco

This new concert flamenco follows the great mid-century Madrid makers – Esteso, Santos, Barbero, Arcángel – very closely. Its rosette and headstock are, in the luthiers' own words, inspired by the designs of Santos Hernández, and it is finished in shellac with added colors for the look of the old flamenco school.

Woods and Bracing

The three-piece Greek cypress back is meant, the luthiers tell us, to capture the flexibility and beauty of sound of 19th-century Andalusian guitars, while the Italian spruce top is braced with a roughly symmetrical six-fan system and two cross-bars above and below the bridge. Mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard – a pairing that adds brilliance, brightness and snap.

Sound

Light in build and low in action, the guitar is comfortable and responsive, and its voice is classic flamenco – raspy, with the right dose of "flamenco sizzle," equally at home solo or in an ensemble. All in, this is an exceptional instrument by any standard.

Matías Rojas & Carmen Sanzol: Argentine Guitar Makers in Italy

Matías Rojas & Carmen Sanzol were born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they met while studying guitar making in 2007 and began working together. Over the following years they studied with many teachers of both guitar and violin making, taught from 2016, built an "Italian Polygonal Spinet" after the 1540 instrument of the Renaissance maker Dominicus Pisaurensis, and from 2019 specialized in multi-string and flamenco guitars, working with Rodolfo Edgardo Luis Cucculelli. In 2021 they moved to Cremona, Italy, and in 2023 began to frequent Suji Kim's workshop in Parma. Today they live and work in Santa Cecilia, in the Val Trebbia (Coli, Piacenza), making their instruments entirely by hand with traditional techniques and all-natural materials.

Prize Winners in Granada

In 2024 Matías and Carmen won Third Prize in the flamenco guitar category at the VII Antonio Marín Montero Guitar Building Competition in Granada, Spain (July 30 – August 1, 2024).