- Photographed in Peabody Conservatory's Friedberg Hall with four cameras, Manuel Barrueco's 2004 solo recital sponsored by the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society is featured throughout the film. Also included are excerpts of Manuel's performance of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez before an audience of twenty thousand in Antwerp, Belgium, and the premiere of Roberto Sierra's Folías with Victor Víctor Pablo Perez Pérez conducting the Orquesta Sinfóonica de Galicia. In candid interviews, Manuel shares his life journey from Santiago de Cuba and his first public performance at the age of nine eleven to his debut recital at Carnegie Hall and the international concert and recording career that followed. The documentary covers his openness to a wide variety of styles and his collaborations with non-classical guitarists like Andy Summers, formerly of The Police, and jazz guitarist Al Di Meola. David Tanenbaum tells of recording a duo arrangement of Lennon & McCartney's Penny Lane with Barrueco in the same Abbey Road Studio where the Beatles recorded the original. The film includes a section on Manuel teaching talented guitarists who have come from around the world to attend his Peabody master class, as well as a private lesson with his Peabody student Lukasz Kuropaczewski, who is already an international concert and recording artist.—Michael R. Lawrence
- Director Michael Lawrence has produced the first documentary about a classical guitarist that could be shown in an actual movie theater. I thought I knew all there was to know about Manuel Barrueco: that he was originally from Cuba and ushered in a new way of playing. This, as veteran director Michael Lawrence shows, is only the tip of the iceberg.
Lawrence's documentary starts out in Santiago de Cuba, where Barrueco was born and began playing guitar. Barrueco recounts how Castro's coming to power was an exhilarating experience that quickly changed. According to Barrueco, the most painful experience of his life was leaving his hometown on a train, leaving all of his relatives behind. Upon arriving in Miami, a place Manuel liked, his parents quickly realized that it would be beneficial for their son's musical development to move north. Settling in Newark, New Jersey Manuel had a hard time adjusting. Concerning his public high school experience, Barrueco notes that, "It seemed to me that lunch hour meant that the Italian kids and the black kids wanted to kill each other. There were a lot of gangs in the area...I hated living there." Despite these years, when support for his playing was limited, Barrueco did end up at Peabody. Once there, he did not practice at all: "I really didn't feel like playing. I became rebellious...all I did was basically party the whole time." Toward the end of his undergraduate career, however, Barrueco did start to practice seriously. Faculty members quickly recognized his talent, and before he knew it he was making his Carnegie Hall debut. Weighing in throughout the film are such luminaries as David Tanenbaum, David Russell, Andy Summers, Eliot Fisk, Al Di Meola and Placido Domingo, among others. It is the insights of the people who know him, most of whom have played or recorded with the maestro, that really shed light on Mr. Barrueco as an artist. Whether you are a Barrueco fan, or just enjoy a good story, there is something here for everyone.
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