Shoreham guitarist at reopening of Embassy

Guitar virtuoso Richard Durrant is getting ready for his third – and most prestigious – visit to Paraguay in as many years.

Not only will the Shoreham musician be topping the bill at a gala concert in the capital, Asunción, to help celebrate the reopening of Paraguay’s British Embassy, but he will also be playing an unusual open-air gig – to an audience under a tree.

The British Embassy in Paraguay is open again after a gap of eight years and Richard has been invited as a world-class musical ambassador to perform with OSCA (Orquesta Sinfónica de la Ciudad de Asunción).

The November 7 concert will include two legendary works. Richard is playing the Rodrigo guitar concerto Concierto de Aranjuez and Pablo Romero will be the soloist in Elgar’s cello concerto.

Richard will also be giving the world première of a work for guitar, cello and cello section – Lamento y Danza – which he has been commissioned to write specially for the concert.

He explained: “It’s based on a harrowing, medieval English hymn, De Milde Lomb, about the Easter lamb and is a reflection of Paraguay’s suffering down the years.”

The ‘concert by the tree’ will be a few days later in the riverside town of Rosario, after Richard has taken part in a guitar convention honouring Paraguayan composer Agustín Barrios Mangoré and given a solo recital in Concepción.

Rosario gig organiser John Holland, 67, explained: “The tree sprang to prominence in 1940 as a gathering place for European members of the religious Society of Brothers (Bruderhof) who had fled to Paraguay from the Nazis.

“After they had spent two days travelling up river, the tree was the only shelter where they could organise wagons to take them into the jungle to build new settlements.”

Among those fleeing Hitler’s wartime reign of terror were John’s parents-to-be, his Austrian mother and English father. John was born in Shropshire, but the family returned to Paraguay during his formative years.

“The whole town of Rosario (population 4,000) is so excited about Richard’s gig,” said John, whose pump-priming contribution of £100 led to a £20,000 civic campaign to restore the tree and its surrounds after erosion threatened to destroy the Bruderhof meeting place.

“There’s room for about 100 people around the tree and my plan is to have Richard playing 20 to 30 yards away on the river on top of a boat!”

John and his family have been long-time friends of Richard. He explained: “The story goes that my brother Luke, a film-maker, was at a folk gig many years ago.

“Suddenly the Irish music stopped and Richard stepped forward and performed a dazzling guitar solo by Paraguay’s most famous son – Agustin Barrios. Luke approached Richard after the show and asked him how come?”

The answer goes back to when Richard was an eight-year-old and received an Alirio Diaz record for Christmas. Master Durrant, already a fluent guitarist, was inspired both by Diaz’s style of playing and three precious tracks by Barrios on side two of the disc.

“Those three pieces changed everything,” said Richard. “I loved those tracks even more than my Dad’s Django records.”

At the time, Richard would catch the number 26 bus to his guitar lessons in Hove. And so it was, some 40 years later, that The Number 26 Bus to Paraguay became the title of his first solo album of works by Barrios.

Thanks to the efforts of Robert Munro, a Paraguayan living in Oxford, Richard first visited Paraguay in 2011 and he launched the Number 26 Bus album during a highly-successful concert tour.

Awards and accolades followed, including Richard being declared an Illustrious Visitor to Asunción, and he returned to Paraguay a year later to launch a second album – Hijo de Hombre – of Barrios compositions.

He also gave the Paraguayan première, to rapturous acclaim, of the Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with OSCA and Luis Szarán – despite having been warned not to play music by a Brazilian composer in Paraguay.

But it is in his ‘coals to Newcastle’ mission of taking Paraguayan music back to Paraguay that Richard continues to excel.

He said: “If you also count the repertoire I play by current composers like Kike Pedersen, Juan Duarte del Paraguay and Felipe Sosa, I probably know more Paraguayan music than anyone else in the world.”