My daughter Katrina Sol Warren is a student at Rhode Island School of Design, and until now a self-taught artist.
“¡En Tus Sueños!” features original animation by Katrina. This was a project for one of her RISD courses. The music is "La Catira" by Antonio Lauro (1917–1986), a lovely piece from this Venezuelan composer which I recorded on classical guitar.
Katrina’s beautiful, hand-made stop-motion animation is made from approximately 1,500 individual frames, and features eight different handmade sets. She used all recycled materials.
Four hundred years ago, on April 22, 1616, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, died in Madrid. (William Shakespeare died the next day.) Cervantes died in the house on Calle de León that he’d been renting from Francisco Martínez, chaplain of the Convent of San Ildefonso.
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Luthiers and guitar shops in the Spanish capital
On my trip this August to Madrid, I decided to spend some time visiting a few of the city’s guitar shops and luthiers—artisanal guitar makers. I’ve visited Spain and Madrid several times previously, yet seven years had transpired since my last visit and I had rarely endeavored to visit classical or flamenco guitar makers there. August is arguably not the best month to visit Madrid—a majority of the residents have fled the oppressive heat of the city for vacations at the beach or abroad, and the inhabitants that remain are not inclined to work much, so while shops such as the Corte Inglés or Zara are promoting rare sale prices, many smaller boutiques, restaurants, and other businesses have irregular hours or are closed for the month. On the other hand, while tourists are in abundance, the fact that the populace has abandoned the metropolis leaves Madrid’s streets, cafés and bars relatively deserted.
The guitar in Spain, it goes without saying, is as ubiquitous as bulls and bullfighting. When we refer to the “Spanish guitar” today it can mean both the classical guitar or flamenco guitar; though similar in some ways in construction, the latter generally features a lower action, with strings sometimes “buzzing” against the frets, and a width, or bout, that is typically narrower than its classical counterpart. The early development of the guitar had perhaps as much to do with Italy as Spain, and of course today superb classical and flamenco guitars are made in every corner of the world. But it’s easy to associate the classical guitar primarily with Spain, and with Madrid in particular, which has been the heart of Spanish guitar making since the mid-eighteenth century.
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