Madrid, Spain – Renowned Spanish guitarist Mario Escudero died in Miami, Florida, November 19, 2004, at 8 a.m. Escudero had been suffering of Parkinson’s disease. His son will bury his ashes in Madrid.
Mario Escudero Valero was born in Alicante (Spain), in 1928. He was one of the great innovators of the guitar in the 20th century.
Escudero studied in Madrid under the tutelage of two of the greatest Flamenco guitarists of the time, Ramón Montoya and Niño Ricardo. Escudero moved to the United States and recorded several guitar albums in New York, as a duet with another Spanish master, Sabicas. Some of these recordings became a reference point for the great modernizer of Flamenco guitar in the 1970s, Paco de Lucía.
Mario Escudero became a US citizen in 1969. He maintained homes in Sevilla & New York for over 30 years and returned to Spain in the
1980s. In 1994 he moved back to the United States, when his son Ramón died in 1994, and gradually lost his ability to perform due to Parkinson’s disease.
Author: Wojciech Rubis
Wojciech Rubiś is a jazz musician with an inclination towards world music, fusion, Latin, ethnic music. He’s active mainly in the music scene as a sideman, arranger and conductor. In this role, he has appeared in various jazz and popular music bands in Poland and abroad.
He worked for cruise marine (including Royal Caribbean), theaters and television French and Japanese, including Canal +, La Cinquième, Planète + and artistic Muzzik (now Mezzo), MTV Japan.
Wojciech has collaborated with many distinguished musicians, among others: Niño Josele, David Chesky, Kurt Elling, Michael Parkinson, Marisa dos Reis Nunes, Bebo Valdés, Javier Limón, Gary Witner, Jarosław Śmietana, Paweł Kaczmarczyk, Grzegorz Motyka, Ryszard Krawczuk, Michał Barański, Michał Knapik.
He has considerable experience in teaching and music education, lecturer at many individual workshops of jazz and classical music organized by instituions such as Webster University Department of Music (St. Louis), Musicians Institute of Contemporary Music, the Guitar Institute of Technology, Los Angeles.
