"Tamiz"

Album that marks the beginning of guitarist Alejandro Hurtado's career as a composer

What the truly great ones do is start by venerating and learning from their elders, assimilating it, recreating it, and, at the same time, filtering it. From what those geniuses did and also from what's around them, close at hand. To finally, with the product of these two sieves, create their own universe. Then, if the filter is good and thorough, the nugget obtained is gold. The substance has to be good by necessity.

Alejandro Hurtado is that good news that the guitar always needs, especially now. From Alicante, like some of our most remembered predecessors. And his second album, which actually was born simultaneously with the first, is the other filter we were missing to complete our amazement. It's his other truth, but there will be more. Not too long ago, he made clear his exquisite wisdom in recreating the essence of the great masters; now it's time to show the connection between that and his own reality as a performer. Second nugget, ounce, gold ingot. We couldn't recall a more crowded or more forceful debut in the world of guitar playing. A debut that's difficult to match, indeed, as it strikes twice.

"Tamiz" arrives in the river of flamenco guitar during a period of various materials and sediments of varied origin, intention, and result. The current times, in which this album shines, are conducive to swimming downstream and easily finding a place among the herd and going with the flow. There are safe havens and often even profitable ones. But Alejandro Hurtado has chosen the opposite: to sail upstream, against the current, towards the summit of his contemporary guitar playing. And like his concert guitar, alone and without a crew. At this point, he could even record much more; he already has two albums in the hold, and in this one, as in the previous one, his credentials as an enthusiast, connoisseur, and, ultimately, an extremely important virtuoso with aspirations beyond market trends are evident. And that beyond is the paths and currents that the few guitarists who truly want to leave their mark and define an era of guitar playing will inevitably have to navigate. Add to all of this the incredibly difficult ability to reconvert and recreate each touch, the constant renewal of his compositions, and the inexhaustible creative wealth he possesses, no matter what unforeseen storms may come. His filter is always alert.

Alejandro's "Tamiz" combines power, rhythm, weight... everything that the guardians of the purest form demand from outsiders who venture into their flamenco neighborhoods. But it also has articulation, phrasing, clarity, and those latest technical and harmonic innovations that academics obsessed with clinical analyses demand.

However, the strength of Alejandro Hurtado's proposal is that his tremendous guitar serves his own reason for being, his very human essence. In the end, you can see the nobility of a young but already seasoned guitarist who knows his family, his love, the guitar festival that gave him a little push, the one that catapulted him, the Cordoban street where he made the transition to adulthood, the cantaor who asked him for seguiriyera cante, the legendary cabales room of Villa Rosa where flamenco guitar was brewed, or his favorite time of day, to be himself. The Alejandro we know, the one he's always been.

Pablo San Nicasio Ramos