Santiago de Murcia - William Carter - The Herald

Guitar music, like organ music, is often the province of anoraks. Carter, guitarist in the sadly missed Palladian Ensemble, has always been a breed apart: you hear the music with Carter, not the scraping and scratching of fingers over frets. His sunny new album explores the extraordinary composer Santiago de Murcia, whose versatile compositions embrace classical and Spanish folk idioms with integrity. The music ranges from intricately contrapuntal to flamboyantly extrovert Spanish rhythms that cry out for stamping heels and clicking castanets. Much of it sounds improvised. It is not. Baroque music for a summer afternoon, with an intimacy that draws you in.