Posts Tagged ‘Ramirez’
Segovia – The Ramirez Years, John Mills
From the Ramirez blog, here’s a really cool story about the 100th anniversary of Segovia’s first playing a Ramirez. The first video tells the story of Segovia getting that guitar and of Amalia Ramirez wanting to honor that moment 100 years later with John Mills.
“Andres Segovia first played Ramirez guitars in 1912, up to 1937, when he changed to the German maker Herman Hauser. In the early 1960’s he moved back to using Ramirez guitars, with a brand new design called the ‘Tradicional’ Model 1a, an instrument with a longer string length and larger fingerboard, using the then newly discovered Western Red Cedar wood for the soundboard, built specifically for Segovia. 100 years later, legendary British classical guitarist John Mills presents a series of national and international recitals in which he uses this special Ramirez guitar, kindly supplied by Amalia Ramirez. John plays a selection of pieces written for and transcribed by Segovia, including works by Tansman, Torroba, Haug and Castelnuovo – Tedesco. In the summer of 2013, a special double CD and booklet will be released as part of the project.”
Julius Reder Carlson is a musicologist and ethnomusicologist who came to the store one day and immediately impressed everyone with his playing. Since then he’s become a friend and we’re very happy to have him come in from time to time and record some guitars for us. Here he is playing Aníbal Arias’ arrangement of J.C. Cobián’s Niebla del Riachuelo on a 2012 Richard Reynoso guitar, and Carlos Gardel’s Volver (also arranged by Arias) on a great 1965 Ramirez 1a.
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We have some more videos of young Australian virtuoso Alberta Khoury. You’ll remember that she was in town for the Parkening International Guitar Competition, and even though she was only 16 at the time she competed in the adult division and was a semi-finalist. Here she is playing the Prelude to Bach’s lute suite, BWV 1006, on a Ramirez Elite, and Dowland’s Fantasia #7 on a 2008 Paco Santiago Marin ’30th Anniversary’.
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).
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We’re celebrating the Madrid school throughout the month of November. Just buy any guitar from a Madrid maker (Contreras, Ramirez, Perez or Conde) and we’ll give you a shopping spree worth 10% of the purchase price of your guitar – and there’s no limit. You can use that 10% shopping spree to buy anything on the site – from strings to cases or furniture or even another guitar. Just give us a call or we’ll email you instructions on how to redeem you shopping spree. Cannot be combined with any other offer.
The folks at CMG, the US ditributor for Ramirez, are giving away a trip to Spain including airfare from the US, 4 nights in Madrid and a tour of the Ramirez shop. Just go here to sign up and they announce the winners in January 2012. You have until the end of the year to sign up, but you know you’re going to forget, so just go sign up now.
I’ve often noted that most guitar makers are either frustrated guitarists or the sons of guitar makers. But Teodoro Perez started making guitars because in Franco’s Spain he needed a job at 13, and his father happened to see that a certain guitar maker needed an apprentice. That guitar maker was Jose Ramirez III and Teodoro went on to make Ramirez guitars for over 20 years before venturing out on his own. He now works with his son, his daughter and her husband in a small shop in Madrid.
Here’s Teodoro telling us his story of how he got his start at Ramirez.
Guitarist Iren Arutyunyan was kind enough to stop by and record some videos for us last week before running off to Georgia for the GFA convention. Here she is playing a Ramirez, a Kurt Becker and a Stefano Moccetti:
Update: I just added another video of Fabricio playing a gorgeous 1923 Domingo Esteso
Sometimes things just work out, the way they did this week when guitarist Fabricio Mattos was at LAX on a ten hour layover between Europe and New Zealand. Fabricio’s friend, Nick Norton, met him at the airport and brought him over to GSI to pass the time in a nicer environment, and Fabricio somehow had the energy to record some great guitars for us.
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The Ramirez Family: Masters of the Guitar
text by Marco Bazzotti photos from the Ramirez archive
The great adventure of the Spanish ancient luthier dynasty. The protagonists, the techniques and the secret of a legend born in Madrid more than one hundred years ago. Here the history of their success.
Beautiful, elegant and thoroughly Spanish. A dream for the passionate and a virtual necessity for the musician that performs in public. Thanks to the high standards of construction and to the adherence to traditional techniques it has been able to conquer a corner of the market, making it the envy of many other brands. We are speaking of the Ramirez guitar. If the cliche “Spanish guitar” has become inseparable with the six-stringed instrument, enlivening a two-word phrase with historical significance, comparable to the phrases “Neapolitan mandolin” or “French horn”, it is even more valid for guitarists to speak of the dynasty of the guitarreros Ramirez, a name that for more than a century has been the exemplar for the most prestigious signatures in guitar construction.
