{"id":12647,"date":"2019-03-28T16:06:13","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T23:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=12647"},"modified":"2019-03-28T16:08:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T23:08:06","slug":"video-pick-of-the-week-andrew-blanch-plays-alirio-diazs-arrangement-of-ignacio-figueredos-los-caujaritos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/video-pick-of-the-week-andrew-blanch-plays-alirio-diazs-arrangement-of-ignacio-figueredos-los-caujaritos\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Pick of the Week: Andrew Blanch Plays Alirio D\u00edaz’s Arrangement of Ignacio Figueredo’s ‘Los Caujaritos’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first heard Australian classical guitarist Andrew Blanch<\/strong><\/a> in 2016, on his excellent album Spanish Guitar Music<\/em><\/a>, on which he deftly covered selections from de Falla, T\u00e1rrega, Castelnuovo-Tedesco (OK, not Spanish but his Caprichos de Goya<\/em>, three of which are on the album, sure are), Alb\u00e9niz, Llobet, Turina, and Scarlatti (another Italian!). In 2016 I also saw him perform at the Biasini Competition in San Francisco (where he was one of three finalists); very impressive!<\/p>\n

This video, courtesy of Open Strings Berlin<\/a>, was shot on a sunny summer day in 2018 at\u00a0Mauerpark in Berlin. Andrew plays a wonderfully buoyant and energetic piece called\u00a0Los Caujaritos<\/em> by\u00a0Ignacio ‘El Indio’ Figueredo (1899\u20131995), a Venezuelan harpist and composer of considerable renown in the South American folk music world. He was a master of the arpa llanera<\/em> and author of more than 400 compositions. His countryman Alirio D\u00edaz made guitar transcriptions of numerous llanera<\/em> compositions (by Figueredo and others), including this one, and though I couldn’t track down an album by\u00a0D\u00edaz that contained Los Caujaritos<\/em>, I did find it on a 1975 album by Figueredo called Sus Mejores Canciones<\/em>. My (occasionally trustworthy) “Google translate” tells me that “Los Caujaritos” translates to English as “Little Rubber bands,” so I’m going to go way<\/em> out on a very shaky limb and suggest that perhaps the title is an allusion to the strings on the Venezuelan harp (which are decidedly not made of rubber; we’re being poetic here, folks. Feel free to shoot down my theory!).<\/p>\n

Besides D\u00edaz’s championing of Figueredo, the major reason this piece has migrated into popular classical-guitar literature is because John Williams recorded the work on his fantastic and influential 2003 album El Diablo Suelto: Guitar Music of Venezuela<\/a>,<\/em> which, with one exception, consists entirely of guitar transcriptions by\u00a0D\u00edaz. In fact,\u00a0Los Caujaritos<\/em> opens the album, which also contains a second work by the composer, Priva Resuello<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u2014Blair Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ignacio ‘El Indio’ Figueredo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first heard Australian classical guitarist Andrew Blanch in 2016, on his excellent album Spanish Guitar Music, on which he deftly covered selections from de Falla, T\u00e1rrega, Castelnuovo-Tedesco (OK, not Spanish but his Caprichos de Goya, three of which are on the album, sure are), Alb\u00e9niz, Llobet, Turina, and Scarlatti (another Italian!). In 2016 I also saw him perform at the Biasini Competition in San Francisco (where he was one of three finalists); very impressive! This video, courtesy of Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":12653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-watch","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/blanch.jpg?fit=369%2C262&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}