José Antonio Chic – Classical Guitarist and Composer
José Antonio Chic is a Spanish classical guitarist and composer, and the founder and director of the chamber orchestra Ensemble XXI. He is known for the expressive quality of his playing and for his own works for guitar and for ensemble.
Support the artist
Buy with José Antonio Chic’s code
Enter JOSE50 at checkout and €50 is deducted from any guitar in the Siccas Luthiers range. José receives a share of the sale, at no extra cost to you.
Writing for the guitar in company
Most guitarists spend their working life alone on stage. Chic’s work moves in the opposite direction: much of what he writes places the guitar inside an ensemble, where it has to hold its own against instruments that can easily cover it. That is a compositional problem before it is a performing one, and it explains why the pieces exist at all – the repertoire he wanted did not yet exist in the quantity he needed.
Through his project Guitar in Ensemble he shares his compositions and scores worldwide, free of charge. Anyone who has looked for playable ensemble material with a guitar part knows how rare that is. Giving the scores away rather than selling them is a decision about circulation: the music is played more often, by more people, than it would be behind a paywall.
At Siccas Guitars
Several of his recordings have appeared on our channel. Here he plays his own piece Samsara:
In duo with Ana Cambra he recorded the Escenas Fantásticas for two guitars and El Jardín de Cristal, and with Jorge Jiménez his composition Y a lo lejos tu sonrisa.
The duo recordings are worth hearing next to each other. Two guitars are the hardest chamber formation to write for convincingly, because the instruments share a register and a colour and can blur into one another. Chic writes them apart from each other on purpose, and the pieces stay legible.
Discover more players in our profiles of great classical guitarists.
