Posts Tagged ‘flamenco’
Erez Perelman and Paco De Lucia
If you build flamenco guitars the dream is to have Paco De Lucia play one of your guitars, and I imagine you try not to allow yourself to hope that he’ll like it enough to actually want one. But when Erez Perelman put a guitar in Paco’s hands Paco just kept playing it and saying how much he liked it, then how great it would be to record on, and now Paco’s manager has contacted Erez in order to get a guitar for Paco to record with! Not that we’re surprised, given the quality of the guitars that Erez has been sending us.. My favorite comment that Paco makes in the videos is ‘it sounds old’.
We just got in our first ever negra from Teodoro Perez, and it’s a killer guitar. I like that it’s on the bright side but with huge basses and really well balanced. Also, it’s loud. Here’s me messing around playing some Alegrias on it.
We’ve just received three new guitars from Lucas Martin in Granada, including this really cool flamenco with African rosewood. I was surprised that it had the snap you usually associate with a blanca but with that negra depth, if that makes any sense. I really like this guitar. So here’s me playing some Granaina stuff I’m writing and obviously need to practice more.
I didn’t set out to make each video exactly 33 seconds long, but that’s how it turned out. I got some emails last week asking about the various student model flamencos under $1,000, so I thought I should do some videos of them. I did some demos last week that were a bit longer and this week I was playing around with the idea of the shortest possible video to give an idea of the guitar. The result turns out to be the 33 second video. Feel free to let me know if this gives you guys enough of an idea to form an opinion of the guitars, or if they’re just too short.
Among his many claims to fame, which include being part of that wave of flamencos who made it an international thing in the ’60s, Jose Greco gave Paco De Lucia his first steady gig touring when he was just 13. I’m guessing that the responses to this video will be either: a) Too theatrical; b) That’s exactly what flamenco is supposed to be like; or c) Wow, that’s outdated. Now that I’ve poisoned your opinion by giving you my three options, let’s see what you think.
Erez Perelman is just finishing up a new flamenco for us and he sent us these photos. The last flamenco we got from him was kind of amazing, so we’re all looking forward to this one. Click on the images to see them bigger, and click again for even bigger.
This is a really fun guitar that just came in. It’s a brand new Lester DeVoe cedar flamenco with mechanical pegs, and here’s me trying it out, playing some bulerias.
While there seems to be way fewer women than men playing the classical guitar, in the flamenco world women who play the guitar are pretty much unheard of. There are plenty of great women dancers, of course, and singers, but I have yet to hear of a single woman who’s really made it as a flamenco guitarist, and while I know there are a few, I have yet to see one perform in Spain, or anywhere for that matter.
Just after someone commented about the Iren Arutyunyan videos how nice it was to see a woman playing, I saw this flamenco dance video that someone had posted on facebook with a woman playing the guitar. The piece didn’t call for a whole lot of guitar, though, so I did a search for her on YouTube and found some more. Turns out Bettina Flater is a Norwegian woman living in Spain and doing the flamenco guitar thing. The first video is her stuff, and the second one is the one I originally saw on facebook that features the dancer Karen Lugo
Here’s some classic theatrical flamenco from the 70′s. Antonio Gades and Cristina Hoyos were a sort of flamenco power couple and did a lot of very theatrical flamenco (and a bunch of movies, of course) long before Joaquin Cortés and the current generation came along. Not sure who the guitarist is, but the singer sounds like El Turronero to me. A few minutes of the all-guy thing before Antonio and Cristina show up, but it’s all worth watching.
Flamenco Guitarist Grisha will be performing and giving a master class at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA, this Sunday, May 22. Masterclass is only $15 with concert ticket and $20 without. Concert is $20 and $15 for students. For more info call 949-582-4656 or click here.
