Photo | Jesse Prado
Roberto Granados (left) and Bill White (right) practice their duo.
College freshman brings flamenco to East Bay
October 30, 2014
At just 16 years old, Roberto Granados is already a professional guitarist and a freshman in California State University, East Bay’s music department.
His odyssey with the guitar began when he was six and started home schooling and learning classical guitar under his teacher Gyorgy Vass. At age eight, he moved toward flamenco under the guidance of guitarist Jason McGuire.
The young guitarist has taken his talents across the world, having played for President Barack Obama when he was just 10 years old and more recently flying out to Spain to play a couple sets with local Flamenco guitarists.
Vass remarked in all of his years teaching he’d never seen a student as quick as Granados.
“I still remember my first meeting with Roberto,” said Vass. “I asked him to play something for me and he played Jimi Hendrix, ‘Purple Haze’”.
Granados is one of eight classical guitarists in CSUEB’s music department this year. Between being part of an ensemble, weekly workshops and putting on a recital for his duo with graduate student Bill White, as well as any other shows he might be playing, his father and manager Erwin Granados said he does not have time for much else.
“He’s involved in school,” Erwin Granados said, “but he’s got a flamenco show he’s gonna be doing for people coming up from Spain in March.”
One of the people he will play with is 22-year-old Flamenco guitarist Mario Moraga Perez. A month before he started his freshman year he took a trip to Spain with his entire family to play other flamenco musicians.
“We played flamenco in a festival,” said Roberto Granados. “It’s called a, ‘feti,’ and it’s basically your equivalent of a county fair that goes all night.”
Since he and Perez are from different continents they will be rehearsing via video chat. This upcoming performance is one of a few steps Roberto Granados and his father are making to integrate flamenco into CSUEB’s music department.
Erwin Granados is currently discussing possibilities for an exchange program with CSUEB professor Marc Teicholz that would allow music students in Spain to trade places with students that are studying the same subject here.
Until then, Roberto Granados plans to get more repertoires together for all of the performances he has coming up. Currently he’s working on a piece called ‘Fantasy Divisions’ by British composer Stephen Dodgson.
He described it as a, “really atonal and modern piece.”
This is what he has been into as far as solo classical guitar repertoire goes, in contrast and comparison to the traditional guitar he’s been used to playing all his life.
Guitar Salon International also wants to talk to him about the upcoming performance in a few months. GSI is a studio based in Santa Monica, where they have guitars from around the world that they invite musicians to come out and play while being filmed for their blog. This will be the second time he’s worked with them since they featured him in July.
According to GSI’s website, Roberto Granados performances include playing on NPR’s From the Top and with the San Francisco Guitar Quartet. The guitar quartet is one of the most sought after quartets in the Bay Area while his NPR alumni membership has gotten him performances at the Emmy’s and for the President in 2009.
“One of my friends plays Latin Jazz and she’s been asking me for a while to come play with them but I don’t have time and I have to balance everything out,” said Roberto Granados. “…I have a really hard time saying no to people.”
