2025 Rojas & Sanzol SP/CY

This 2025 Rojas & Sanzol is a spruce and cypress flamenco blanca built in Santa Cecilia, Italy, by Matías Rojas and Carmen Sanzol, Third Prize winners for flamenco guitar in Granada in 2024.

Old Madrid School Style

Made very traditionally, like the instruments of the great luthiers of the mid-century Madrid school (Esteso, Santos, Barbero, Arcángel), this is a new concert guitar we are extremely thrilled to have. Matías and Carmen credit Santos Hernández as the inspiration for the rosette and headstock designs, and the shellac finish has added colors to evoke the "look" of the old flamenco school.

Construction

Italian spruce from the Val di Fiemme for the top, Greek cypress for the back and sides – in three pieces, designed, as the luthiers tell us, to achieve the flexibility and beauty of sound of the old 19th-century Andalusian guitars. Inside is a more-or-less symmetrical 6-fan system with two cross-bars above and below the bridge area. A mahogany neck with an ebony fingerboard helps give a brilliant, bright sound with great snap at the attack.

Sound

With its lightweight build and low string height, it plays comfortably and responds easily. The sound is very traditional flamenco: raspy, with just the right amount of "flamenco sizzle" for solo or ensemble playing – traditional Spanish charm from a pair of luthiers with a very eclectic and extremely musical background. 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).