Andrés Segovia first vis­it­ed the Alham­bra, the sto­ried 14th Cen­tu­ry Moor­ish palace in Grana­da, Spain, when he was ten years old. “It was here,” he said, “that I opened my eyes to the beau­ty of nature and art. To be here is to feel one­self to be near, very near, par­adise.”

Segovia is often called the father of clas­si­cal gui­tar. As a young boy he learned to play fla­men­co, the tra­di­tion­al music of his native Andalu­sia, but by the time he was a teenag­er he was tran­scrib­ing Bach and oth­er com­posers, adapt­ing music orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for dif­fer­ent instru­ments. Over the course of his life­time, Segovia tran­scribed much of the clas­si­cal reper­toire, refined the stan­dard tech­nique, and estab­lished the gui­tar as a seri­ous instru­ment, bring­ing it out of the par­lors and into the con­cert halls.

In 1976, at the age of 84, Segovia returned to the Alham­bra to per­form for the doc­u­men­tary, Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Gui­tar. In the excerpt above, Segovia plays one of his favorite pieces, “The Leg­end of Asturias,” by Isaac Albéniz, who com­posed it for the piano as a pre­lude to his “Can­tos de España.” The com­plete doc­u­men­tary is avail­able on a two-film DVD, Andrés Segovia: In Por­trait.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

A per­fect way to chase away the Mon­day morn­ing blues. Once obscure, the Brazil­ian musi­cal group A Ban­da Mais Boni­ta da Cidade (or “The Most Beau­ti­ful Band in the City”) has been rid­ing a wave of pop­u­lar­i­ty for the past two weeks, ever since their video, guar­an­teed to put a lit­tle smile on your face, went viral on YouTube. Oração (or “Prayer”) is their song; and it has reg­is­tered some 4.7 mil­lion views since May 17.

Thanks to a com­menter over at Metafil­ter, you can now find a quick and dirty trans­la­tion of the lyrics. (The trans­la­tion also appears after the jump). Plus we have Por­tuguese primers in our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons.

And if you’re look­ing for a par­o­dy of the viral video — it was only a mat­ter of time, right? — you can find it here. It’s now clock­ing in at 1.2 mil­lion views…

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Inspired by Tyler Cul­len’s project in New York, Dan Maas hit the streets in Lon­don and asked “Hey! What Song are You Lis­ten­ing To?” The tracks, list­ed below the jump, appeal a bit more to my geezer­ish tastes. By the time we reach Krakow we should be in good shape …
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Usman Riaz began play­ing clas­si­cal piano at 6, then took up the gui­tar at 16. Fast for­ward four years, and you have this — the 20-year old Riaz play­ing his song “Fire­fly” in a music video that’s more like a mini indie arts film than any­thing else. At times, Riaz plays his Mar­tin XC1t like a piano key­board, but, all along, you can hear his acknowl­edged influ­ences — Kaki King, Michael Hedges, Don Ross and, of course, Jim­my Page. (Don’t miss these relat­ed videos.) You can learn more about the Karachi musi­cian in this two-part inter­view here and here, and also find his short album, Flash­es and Sparks, on Ama­zon here.

via 3 Quarks Dai­ly

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