Bio:
José Antonio Escobar is one of the most distinguished and versatile classical guitar soloists of his generation. He is especially remarkable due to his perfect balance between his intense musical expression and his vast knowledge of the various musical styles and periods.
He was born in Santiago de Chile, where he graduated with Top Honors after studying at the Conservatory of Music-University of Chile. Immediately after graduating, he continued to perfect his studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Augsburg, Germany. Under the influence of his first master, the lutenist Ernesto Quezada, he became deeply interested in original ancient instruments from the guitar family. This motivated him to round out his studies by attending Early Music courses and master classes with renowned specialists such as Hopkinson Smith, Eduardo Egüez, and Juan Carlos Rivera.
While he is greatly interested in ancient music, he has always felt at home when interpreting 20th Century or contemporary music. This has led him to commission, premiere and record works by renowned composers as well as Chilean composers, in particular. He has also devoted some time to studying and interpreting music with popular and folk influences from Latin America. In this regard, he has worked in various projects both as a soloist and as part of Dúo Sudamericano, along with Javier Contreras, an outstanding Chilean composer and guitarist.
Throughout a period encompassing almost 10 years, he obtained more than fifteen prizes in the most prestigious International Guitar Competitions today, such as Francisco Tárrega (Spain), Alessandria (Italy), Alhambra (Spain), Guitar Foundation of America (USA), Julian Arcas (Spain), Karl Sheit (Austria), among many others.
As a soloist and chamber musician he has toured over 30 countries, covering almost all of Europe and the Americas, as well as some North African countries, the Near East, Asia and Oceania. He has also performed as a soloist with distinguished orchestras, namely Orquesta de Extremadura (Spain), Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino (Italy), St. Michel Strings (Finland), Hofer Symphoniker (Germany), and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile. He has also debuted in major concert halls such as the Brahms-Saal at the Vienna Musikverein, the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre in London, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Sala Cecilia Meireles in Rio de Janeiro, Teatro Monumental in Madrid, Teatro Teresa Carreño in Caracas, etc.
He has completed several recordings under the NAXOS and RTVE labels, receiving excellent reviews from specialized media. He has also worked on several independent recordings both as an artist and producer. He is currently living in Spain, and he is constantly invited to not only perform at recitals but also share his expertise by giving master classes and lectures at major music festivals, courses, seminars and workshops in prestigious universities around Europe and the Americas.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).