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image: by Jonathan Borba

Acoustic Guitars Rule – For Now…

Jo Fender was putting his new model guitar through the final tests and preparations that would change the guitar world, for the first commercial production of solid body guitars the following year. By 1959 15-year-old Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones considered it, and not the Spanish guitar, the real deal. But both types of guitar were on the tip of an unimagined success over the next decade and more.
1949 was an amazing year of new starts, inventions, and premieres with the full impact and influence of many not realised for a long time. And that includes me and my own personal time-line.

24th March
First public performance in Paris of The Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo with Ida Presti and the Orchestre Jeunes Universitaires conducted by Albert Pfremmer in the Sala Pleyel.

7th April
Song: Some Enchanted Evening in the musical South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein premieres on Broadway,New York

8th June
Book: 1984 by George Orwell is first published

18th -20th July
Guitar Concerto n1 op. 99 by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco recorded for Columbia Records in London by Andres Segovia with the New London Orchestra conducted by Alec Sherman. I grew up with Segovia at his peak on this magical recording

23rd July
Julian Bream, just turned 16 years of age, plays a radio broadcast for the BBC Light Programme billed as Fred Alexander and his Players with Julian Bream

23rd July
I was busy seeing the light of day making an entrance and missed the broadcast. Yes, that’s right, I was born on that day!

27th July
The first jet-propelled airline (De Havilland Comet) flies

29th August
USSR carries out its first nuclear test

31st August
Film premiere: The Third Man with Orson Welles

18th October
“It is thinkable that the investigation of the behaviour of migratory birds and carrier pigeons may someday lead to the understanding of some physical process which is not yet known.”
Albert Einstein

2nd December
The Turangalîla-Symphonie by Oliver Messiaen (1908-1992) premieres in Boston, USA, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I first heard it when I was a teenager and was totally knocked out by this 80 minute work for massive orchestra. A magnificent wall of sound thrilled me. It still does.

Thank you for reading.
Carlos