Charlie Lee Byrd (September 16, 1925 – December 2, 1999) was an American guitarist. His earliest and strongest musical influence was Django Reinhardt, the gypsy guitarist. Byrd was best known for his association with Brazilian music, especially bossa nova. In 1962, Byrd collaborated with Stan Getz on the album Jazz Samba, a recording which brought bossa nova into the mainstream of North American music.

Byrd played fingerstyle on a classical guitar

Charlie Byrd was born in Suffolk, Virginia, in 1925 and grew up in the town of Chuckatuck, Virginia. His father, a mandolinist and guitarist, taught him how to play the acoustic steel guitar at age 10. Byrd had three brothers, Oscar, Jack, and Joe, who was a bass player. In 1942 Byrd entered the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and played in the school orchestra. In 1943 he was drafted into the United States Army for World War II, saw combat, then was stationed in Paris in 1945 where he played in an Army Special Services band.

After the war, Byrd returned to the United States and went to New York, where he studied composition and jazz theory at the Harnett National Music School in Manhattan, New York. During this time he began playing a classical guitar. After moving to Washington, D.C. in 1950, he studied classical guitar with Sophocles Papas for several years. In 1954 he became a pupil of the Spanish classical guitarist Andrés Segovia and spent time studying in Italy with Segovia.

Byrd’s greatest influence was the gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, who he saw perform in Paris. Lees verder klik hier .

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Laurindo Almeida (September 2, 1917 – July 26, 1995) was a Brazilian virtuoso guitarist and composer who made many recordings of enduring impact in classical, jazz and Latin genres. He is widely credited, with fellow artist Bud Shank, for creating the fusion of Latin and jazz which came to be known as the “Jazz Samba.” Almeida was the first artist to receive Grammy Awards for both classical and jazz performances. His discography encompasses more than a hundred recordings over five decades.

Laurindo Jose de Araujo Almeida Nobrega Neto was born in the village of Prainha, Brazil near Santos in the state of São Paulo.

Born into a musical family, Almeida was a self-taught guitarist. During his teenage years, Almeida moved to São Paulo, where he worked as a radio artist, staff arranger and nightclub performer. At the age of 19, he worked his way to Europe playing guitar in a cruise ship orchestra. In Paris, he attended a performance at the Hot Club by Stephane Grappelli and famed guitarist Django Reinhardt, who became a lifelong artistic inspiration.

Returning to Brazil, Almeida continued composing and performing. He became known for playing both classical Spanish and popular guitar. He moved to the United States in 1947; a trip financed when one of his compositions, a song known as “Johnny Peddler” became a hit recorded by the Andrews Sisters. In Los Angeles, Almeida immediately went to work in film studio orchestras.
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Eduardo Falú (July 7, 1923 – August 9, 2013) was a well-known Argentine folk music guitarist and composer.

Life and work

Eduardo Falú was born in El Galpón, a village near San José de Metán in the province of Salta, in 1923. His parents, Fada and Juan Falú, were Syrian immigrants. Raised in rural surroundings, he was strongly influenced by the folk traditions of Salta (which remain, in Falú’s words, “something lively, dynamic and evolutionary”).

Falú was given his first guitar as a gift during childhood, and he began to perform traditional folk tunes of the Argentine Northwest as a troubadour. He formed a duo with César Perdiguero, and became well known in the region during the 1940s. Largely self-taught, Falú deepened his knowledge of the guitar through study of the 19th century masters and was trained in harmony and theory by the prominent Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino.

His increasing renown brought him to Buenos Aires in 1945, and he recorded his first album there in 1950. Among the volume of collaborations with many of the leading Argentine poets, perhaps the best-known are his compositions for lyrics written by Jaime Dávalos, among which some of the most popular are Zamba de la Candelaria, Trago de sombra, and Canción del jangadero. Falú wrote music for a number of Argentine historical epics, as well, including Romance de la Muerte de Juan Lavalle (written by Ernesto Sábato) and José Hernández (by Jorge Luis Borges).

He performed overseas for the first time in Paris, in 1959. This was followed by performances in Rome, Los Angeles, Madrid, and numerous other cultural capitals. He was particularly popular in Japan, where from 1963 to 1973, he gave over 200 performances; in subsequent years, he also performed regularly in duos with his nephew, Juan Falú.

Arguably the creator of Argentina’s modern folk song movement, Falú has set over 150 poems to music. These have included Borges’ and Dávalos’, as well as those by León Benarós, Manuel J. Castilla, and Alberico Mansilla. Known for his Chamamé, Chacarera and Zamba compositions, Falú more recently composed two suites, Primera Suite Argentina (1996) and Segunda Suite Argentina (1999).

The Government of Perú bestowed on him a Distinguished Service Award, and Falú’s work earned him an important recognition by his Argentine colleagues in 1985, when he received the highest honor in the Argentine cultural realm, the Konex Award, as well as a Grand Prize by the Argentine Society of Music Composers (SADAIC).

Falú’s last album as a performer, published in 2009, was a tribute to classical Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia. He died on August 9, 2013, at his home in the city of Córdoba; he was 90.