Cuba – Spain
Vídeos
(Sept. 16, 2021, 20:30. Auditorio Eduard Toldrà, CMMB)
PYROPHORUS GUITAR DUO is an original project by the guitarist and composer Alí Arango together with the guitarist Josué Fonseca. With a different proposal to the classical guitar duo canon, Pyrophorus Guitar Duo offers us a new dimension of the versatility and possibilities of this format. With original music and arrangements written for the duo, Arango blurs the barriers between classical and popular, exploring the fusion between Cuban popular music, Jazz, Funk and Contemporary Music.
The duo has already performed in important venues and festivals such as: Palau de la Música Catalana (Barcelona), “Manuel de Falla” Auditorium (Granada), Granada Music and Dance Festival, Maestros de la Guitarra Cycle (Barcelona), Cycle “Los Jardines de Falla” Granada, Palau de la Música Catalana (Barcelona), “Les Garrigues Guitar Fest” Festival, La Herradura Civic Center Theater, Düsseldorf Guitar Festival and they have also toured in Japan.
The duo has recorded its CD Pyrophorus “Vol.1″ for the JSM Guitar Records label and are sponsored by Alhambra Guitars and Knobloch Strings.
“I know the Duo Pyrophorus who now shows, with its real sound, all the “fans” of these musics (escaping the clichés of traditional sounds). There is a magic touch in this duo. It deserves to be listened to.”
LEO BROUWER
“Pyrophorus is the scientific name of a very typical bioluminescent flying insect in Cuba and popularly known as Cocuyo. The name of the genus comes from the Greek pyro: fire and phorus: carrier.
Since the years when I was living in Cuba, I had the dream of creating a guitar duo. It is a format that gives me the possibility to expand the limits of the instrument, as an extension. I have always had the ambition that my music did not sound precisely through a guitar language, avoiding reaching those common places to which the idiomatic nature of the instrument frequently leads you and its limitations in terms of tessitura, tuning, extension and technical possibilities. That is why I try to create with my writing the aural illusion that there are more instruments playing than two guitars, and so, I have also created the two Pyrobox percussion boxes and included Shake both to be played with the feet. Besides, I make use of scordatura, pizzicati, slide, mutes and percussive effects on the guitar or with the voice, sometimes simulating the Bass Drum, the Snare, the Hi-Hat or Toms of the Drums.”
