Manuel Barrueco is celebrating his 50th year as a concert performer and recording artist, counting forward from his debut at Carnegie Hall in 1974. Since that time, the Cuban native and Baltimore resident has become one of the world’s premier classical guitarists and a distinguished professor at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
So how did he get to Carnegie Hall — besides practice, that is?
“I won a prize from New York’s Concert Artists Guild, and the prize was a recital at Carnegie Hall,†Barrueco says by phone from his home. “And with that came a New York Times review that really got my career started. So that’s what I would consider to be the beginning of my career.â€
He’s released numerous albums, including the Grammy-nominated “Solo Piazzolla†and the more recent “Music from Cuba & Spain.†In a spirit of DIY borrowed from another, very different genre, Barrueco records many of his albums at home with his wife, Asgerdur Sigurdardottir, acting as his producer and engineer. He’s releases those albums on his own label, Tonar Music.
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Previously, Barrueco made many albums for the EMI label, but once, while he was recording at Abbey Road Studios in London, a producer pointed out various pieces of equipment and programs such as Pro Tools. “‘These will help you,’ he told me,†Barrueco says. “Now everybody can record themselves.â€
He started Tonar in the early 2000s, around the time that the major labels began struggling to stay afloat. “I just kept doing it by myself,†he says. “I put it there. Somebody wants it? Done.â€
Barrueco began playing guitar when he was 8 years old. “My sister took guitar lessons in our house,†he recalls. “The teacher would come give the lessons there. The guitar was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I was just mesmerized by it. So I asked for lessons, too.â€
By then, Fidel Castro had seized control of Cuba and things had changed drastically. “When the government turned communist, some parents did not allow their kids to go to school because they were afraid of the brainwashing,†he says.
Barrueco had a tutor, he says, and when he was 14, he and his family fled to the U.S.
“Because of all the propaganda in Cuba against the U.S., I didn’t know what was going to happen to us,†he recalls. Leaving all their belongings behind by order of the regime, they arrived in Miami via one of the “freedom flights†that, between 1965 and 1973, brought nearly 300,000 refugees from Cuba to the U.S. “I was 14 at the time, and as we were walking down out of the airplane, I thought somebody was going to be there shooting us or something like that.
“When it didn’t happen. It was kind of a euphoria,†he adds.
Within a year, Barrueco moved with his family from Miami to Newark, New Jersey, where he was thrust into the turbulence of the late ’60s, when hundreds of race riots broke out across the U.S. “It was something different from Miami and certainly different from anything else that I’d seen before,†he says. “The riots going on … it was very confusing to see that.â€
Eventually, he came to Baltimore to study guitar at the Peabody Institute — where he now teaches.
“The funny thing is that people assume that I am here because I went to school here,†he says. “But I came here for family reasons. I have daughters who live here. And I did study here. I feel like I have some roots here, and I kind of like that.â€
Barrueco says the concert he’ll be playing in ºüÀêÊÓƵ is “sort of a sample program in the sense that it goes through the most important composers, starting from the Renaissance.â€
Pieces by Cesare Negri, Vincenzo Galilei and others open the performance, followed by a Baroque-era suite originally written for the lute by Bach, plus Fernando Sor’s Classical-era tour de force, “Grand Solo.â€
The second half of the concert, Barrueco says, “breaks the pattern†and features pieces by American composer Lou Harrison and one each by Spain’s Francisco Tárrega and JoaquÃn Turina.
The day after his concert at the 560 Music Center, Barrueco will give a master class to area classical-guitar students. Teaching, whether it’s a master class or at the Peabody Institute, is a way for him to take the expertise that he’s developed and pay it forward.
“I love the guitar,†he says. “And you know, I’ve dedicated myself to it, and I’ve always tried to become the best guitarist I could be and the best musician I can be. So it’s really great to be able to share with young players about behind-the-scenes, all the things that one needs to do and think about when playing. I enjoy working with the students.â€