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Naxos recording artist.
Growing up in the Philippines, Richard Alcoy, who adopted the stage name Ric *Ickard, started playing guitar at the age of eight by studying the recordings of Andres Segovia, Laurindo Almeida, Charlie Byrd and Chet Atkins.
At seventeen, he began performing guitar concerts. Until he began formal studies at St. Paul College in Manila, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in music education, he was entirely self- taught. At graduation, his alma mater presented him a special award in musical performance. He won first prize in both classical and jazz guitar competitions in the 1980 Philippine Guitar Festival, and was the first guitarist to ever win both categories - all on the same day. Ric's talents blossomed as a young artist. The Philippine government granted him a scholarship to study classical guitar.
Ric have performed in many five-star hotels and cruise ships. Aside from performing around the world, Ric is a regularly featured artist at the annual Chet Atkins Appreciation Society Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Pasadena's Guitar Nights, as well as the Association of Fingerstyle Guitarists.
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Biography
Ferdinando Maria Meinrado Francesco Pascale Rosario Carulli
(b Naples, 9 Feb 1770; d Paris, 14 Feb 1841). Italian guitarist and composer. He was born into a well-to-do family (His father, Michele, was a distinguished literator, secretary to the delegate of the Neapolitan Jurisdiction) and was taught the rudiments of music by his cello teacher, a priest, who was also an amateur musician. Though around the age of 16 his interest shifted decisively to the guitar. The leading Italian guitarist of his time, he moved to Paris some time after the birth of his son (1801) with his French-born wife Marie-Joséphine Boyer. The first indication of his presence outside Italy dates from around 1803, when Gombart of Augsburg brought out a handful of publications; other works were published in Paris and Vienna in 1806–7, principally by Leduc, Pleyel and Artaria, and in Hamburg (Böhme) and Milan (Monzino). From 1809 Carulli made Paris his permanent home, where he was at the centre of the phenomenon known as guitaromanie, establishing himself as a virtuoso, composer and teacher. According to contemporary music critics, Carulli was the first to reveal to Paris audiences what the guitar was capable of in terms of expressivity, timbre, harmony and virtuosity, and he brought about a change in taste and performing practice. Within a few years he also published dozens of the manuscripts which he had brought with him from Italy. The work which signalled his success more than any other was the Méthode complette op.27 (1810 or 1811), which was soon being reprinted repeatedly both in France and abroad, and for decades was the basic teaching work for entire generations of guitarists. For years he had practically no serious rival, except for his two fellow Italians Matteo Carcassi and Francesco Molino. His privileged position lasted at least until 1823, when Fernando Sor arrived in Paris. In 1826 he built and patented, together with the Paris instrument-maker René Lacote, an unusual, ten-string guitar, which he called a decacordo (popularized by Narciso Yepes in the 20th century), for which he also wrote a Méthode complete, op.293 (1826).
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