The classical and flamenco guitar work of the currently Seabeck-based six-string virtuoso Craig Alden Dell is sonically reminiscent of a Sante Fe, New Mexico sunset.
The electrifying orange and golden rays splitting through the far-off mountains are harnessed through the nylon strings of his Brazilian rosewood chiseled guitars.
Born and raised amongst strings and music and performers in the desert state, Dell has peered at and played for that horizon on many an evening. Now, a little more than five decades after picking up the guitar at age 9, that sound still persists.
It’s a passion that has carried throughout his life, he said, and in a crowning moment for the man, the player and the teacher, his strings have been matched and etched onto CD with a style strikingly similar and complementary — that of his former student, a virtuoso and Ph.D. in her own right, AnnaMaria Cardinalli.
A little over two years ago the student and teacher, who began playing together in Santa Fe in the early 1980s when Cardinalli was only 3 years old, reunited and formed El Duo Duende.
While AnnaMaria had been off achieving her fame as a guitarist and operatic mezzo-soprano singer, performing for the Prince of Spain and singing a cappella for Pope John Paul II, Dell, an aging, modern-day flamenco Gypsy had relocated to the Northwest and begun calling Kitsap home.
Over the past five years, Dell has been teaching lessons and giving solo performances in such venues as the Collective Visions Gallery and the Roxy Theatre and also sitting in with the Bremerton Symphony Orchestra on a few occasions. In his career he has played “magnanimous venues” like Carnagie Hall (twice) and both the East and West Coast Guitar Festivals.
Now he is offering his appreciation for Kitsap by putting out pre-release copies of El Duo Duende’s first and second albums.
“I’m willing to (give) these to Kitsap — pre-label, pre-marketed, pre-released CDs,” Dell said, noting the duo’s self-titled defining CD and its quirky follow-up “Flamenco Steel.”
They’ll both be available for $15 at the Amy Burnett Gallery at 296 Fourth St. in downtown Bremerton, Ted Brown Music in the business park behind Target, across from the mall in Silverdale and Online at www.elduoduende.com starting Sept. 14.
“My drive for playing music … or rather concertizing is to heal my audience,” he said. “That’s my goal … I want people to walk out of there healed.”
From what? From whatever might be ailing them at the time, he said.
And while the next El Duo Duende or solo Craig Alden Dell show won’t likely be until next summer (Dell recently underwent shoulder surgery in his fret arm and had a tiny bone replaced in his strumming hand) these CDs should give a glimpse of their soothing sounds.
El Duo Duende, recorded in 2006 at the Fahden Family Studio in Sante Fe, is the more calming of the two pre-releases available to Kitsap. Both guitarists are equipped with soft sounding nylon strings on classical guitars while AnnaMaria adds her operatic touch on a few tracks, spanning formal classical guitar to passionate flamenco. The disc contains classics from composers like Scarlatti, Rossini and Verdi arranged by Dell and Cardinalli.
“Flamenco Steel,” on the other hand, is a whole new breed.
It’s ripe with blazing picados (scales) and arpeggios and sauntering rhythms indicative of the traditional flamenco style, but its being played on steel-stringed classical guitars giving it an edge and bite beyond the customary.
