The release of Espiritu de la Guitarra in April 2006 heralded the first commercial solo guitar recording from Dale Harris. The Espiritu CD features Spanish and Paraguayan music by Albéniz, Barrios Mangoré, De Murcia, Sor and Tárrega.

When not performing, Dale teaches the guitar at St John’s Beaumont School in Old Windsor and is currently busy building a state-of-the-art recording studio. Dale has also composed and performed on library albums and his music has appeared on radio, television and corporate video. Outside his musical interests, Dale enjoys snooker, cross-country hiking, chess, F1 Grand Prix racing, and keenly supports Brentford Football Club.

About the Music

Paraguayan, Agustín Barrios Mangoré (1885-1944) is an interesting figure in  guitar history. He was an outstanding guitarist and performer and one of the first guitarists to make gramophone records. In addition, he was a gifted improviser and a prolific composer boosting the guitar repertoire by approximately 300 works. Choro de Saudade is a nostalgic work dedicated to the "young people of South America". Dale Harris has interpreted the lyrical theme as becoming ever more intense and nostalgic with each recapitulation. A salient feature of Barrios' music and technique is the requirement of large left-hand stretches, and many are employed in Choro de Saudade. The Waltz in D major is a humorous and lively piece reminiscent of a Viennese Waltz. The special moments include the numerous flourishes and the very beautiful brilliate campenella passage in the trio section.

A good example of Nikita Koshkin’s (b.1956) prowess as a composer is demonstrated in his work, Three Stations On One Road (1980). In this work, Koshkin - who usually incorporates elements of atonality, modal and synthetic harmony - draws on jazz and blues elements originally intended as a tribute to jazz guitarist, Charlie Bird. Moscow born Nikita Koshkin has written over a hundred works for guitar.

Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s (b.1939) The Black Decameron finds its inspiration in Leo Frobenius’s work of the same name. Leo Frobenius, an Afro-Hungarian anthropologist, rediscovered and wrote down many African folk stories. The Black Decameron, composed in 1981, finds its inspiration in the written work by Frobenius. In The Harp Of The Warrior, the warrior-harpist is obviously both a highly skillful player and brave fighter. The Flight of the Lovers Through the Valley of Echo’s depicts the warrior-hero who meets a beautiful maiden, whom he falls in love with. The couple then they fly off into the valley in a state of bliss. The Ballad of the Maiden in Love features a simple theme that recurs between brilliant sections. The Cuban composer Leo Brower wrote this work in a period of transition rejecting his previous avant-garde style for Neo-Romanticism; Brower himself says on his transition: “human beings, today, need a more cordial form of expression, more warm, more tangible ... ”.

Adrian Legg is a British guitarist and composer who often blends many varied musical styles such as Folk, Country, Jazz and Classical music within his own compositions – usually written for solo acoustic guitar.  Legg’s Tune for Derroll is a simply a gentle folk-inspired composition. Born Again Idle features a specially modified steel-string acoustic guitar with banjo tuning pegs. The work features numerous string bends the majority if which are performed on the tuning pegs themselves! The work itself has echoes of the pedal-steel guitar, as often featured in American country music.

 The Princes Toys: Suite For Guitar, completed in 1979, is perhaps Nikita Koshkin’s best-known work. The first four movements introduce the main characters of the Suite, each marked with a distinctive musical motif: the Prince, a mechanical monkey, an Indian Doll (who seems to have a curious mystical and hypnotic agenda), and the Playing Soldiers. All of the characters are toys apart from the Prince himself who lives in a fairy-tale world. The Prince was born into a decedent court and his courtiers take every opportunity to mock him when his back is turned. The toys come to life to fight back in a similar manner to the way the Prince had played with them eventually killing the prince. The concluding passage signifies the trial and execution of the death. The final moments of the work depicts the Prince’s dying moments as the performer drags a nail across the length of the guitar string. This epic suite for guitar is amongst one of only a small number of substantial works written for the guitar. However, due the number of extended effects and techniques required to perform the piece, Nikita Koshkin’s Princes Toys Suite is seldom performed.

The music of Venezuela often mixes musical cultures: the indigenous Indians, the colonial Spanish, and African (during the salve trade). In 1932, Lauro (1917-1974) – an ardent cultural nationalist, who played Piano and Violin at that time – attended a concert in Caracas given by Agustín Barrios and immediately decided to take up the guitar. The music of Antonio Lauro often features polyrhythms (used to represent different spirits or deities in traditional Afro-Caribbean rituals) as is the case with both Natalia (‘Valse Criollo’ No. 3’) and Seis Por Derecho. Both pieces are technically demanding and, like Barrios, require large left-hand stretches. Seis Por Derecho is written in the Joropo style, a Venezuelan national dance making extensive use of the hemiola, in this instance an alternation of 6/8 and 3/4 time signatures.  Subtitled "al estilo del arpa venezolana" ("styled after the Venezuelan harp"), the title of this work comes from the llaneros (inhabitants of the Venezuelan llanos or plains) who approved of the six beat rhythm (6 = seis), thus giving it the right (derecho) to be so named. The Vals no.3 was composed between 1938-40 and dedicated to his daughter Natalia. The Guitarist John Williams referred to Antonio Lauro as being the "Strauss of the guitar".

Asturias (from Suite Española Op.47 No.5) by Issac Albéniz (1860-1909)  was originally  written  for  the piano and has become one of  the most  popular transcriptions for the guitar. Albéniz is best known  for  his  miniatures  composed for the piano and his pieces are often highly evocative of Spanish culture. The Principality of Asturias is situated on the north coast of Spain facing the Cantabrian Sea (Mar Cantábrico, the Spanish name for the Bay of Biscay). Asturias is subtitled Leyenda  (originally used as the Preludio in three-movement set entitled Chants d' Espagne, op. 232), and the work has inspired numerous dramatic stories of Hollywood epic proportions such as biblical thunderstorms and devastating earthquakes! Although Albéniz left no clues as to what legend or legends he was referring to, it is likely that he was broadly referring to Andalusian culture, he wrote in 1886 to his friend Enrique Moragas:

“I seek now the tradition...the guzla, the lazy dragging of the fingers over the strings. And above all, a heartbreaking lament out of tune... that which is art, which is all that seems to me beauty and emotion.”

The haunting opening section leads to rapid arpeggios and rasgueado (a strum, using all the right-hand fingers in rapid succession). The slower middle section contains a recurring octave motif in the dominant key, evoking the Spanish Gypsy cante jondo (an improvised song, often recalling bygone persecution). An exploration of the typically Spanish Phrygian mode follows. There follows an exact recapitulation of the opening section (that gains strength from its second airing) followed by a brief choral-like coda.

Written in 1971, Don McLean’s Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) is a heartfelt composition about the life of the artist Vincent Van Gogh. After reading a book about Van Gogh, McLean’s Vincent tells the tragic story of ridicule and cruel rejection that Van Gogh suffered during his life leading to his suicide. Van Gogh painted Starry Night indoors and from memory while in an Asylum at Saint-Remy in 1889. The song proved more popular than McLean’s other worldwide smash hit American Pie.  Chet Atkin’s arrangement of Mclean’s melody is simple and effective, and successfully conveys the sentiment of the song in the absence of the words.

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