Sebastian Pitre

I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1981. I came upon a guitar for the first time when I was 14. A while later, I began to study with different teachers, until one day my dad made me listen to flamenco music, to none other than the master of masters… Paco de Luc�-a. Everything changed there and then. I don’t know why, but I said to myself “I must play that”, and that is how I came to study with Manolo Yglesias, who taught me, from the very beginning, every rhythm, accompaniment to singing and dancing, until a year later he told me: “Che Sebastián, I’m leaving on tour. Do you dare to cover for me at the Carmen, a tablao in Almagro?” And I dared to play (professionally) for the first time. I think it went well; at least they haven’t complained yet!!! As from that moment, I started playing with the artists of the time at different tablaos in Buenos Aires and at a dance academy called Pasaje del Carmen, where I heard a gipsy guitarist called David Amaya had arrived. And so I decided to meet him, and with David I learnt a whole new universe inside flamenco, so modern and different that it included electric guitars and improvisation, something that hadn’t appealed to me on my first approach to music. But now I was dying to know how that improvisation stuff worked. For me, it was pure magic, it was like by sheer chance they got the notes that went well together exactly right. So I decided I had to understand the diagram of the electric guitar, which by the way is a very different instrument from the Spanish guitar. It was then that I was told about Mart�-n Knye, a great Argentine rock musician, and it was with him that I took on the electric guitar, and afterwards with Daniel Pellegrini, the Argentine master of jazz. By then, I was 20 and wondering whether to teach, and so I began to give guitar lessons together with Pato Barreto (singer). Time went by and the number of students increased, so we decided to open the music school Blue House, which functioned for more than 5 years, and through which there passed, among others, more than 500 guitar, singing, bass, piano and drums students. There, I had the pleasure to learn, teach and meet amazing people.

At that time, I recorded my first flamenco EP, called Hoy x Hoy, at Orion studio, with the musicians Horacio Moreno on percussion and Nicolás Courreges on bass. The EP includes 5 pieces of music composed by me. Later, I started working at events in Buenos Aires, which led me to create Sp Ambient Music, an ambient music company for social and corporative events, through which I had the pleasure to play with musicians such as Mart�-n Santillán, Horacio Moreno and Silvia D�'Alesandro, and for great Argentine and foreign companies. At that moment, I was familiar with bossa and tango music, and I was getting into the world of improvisation and jazz for good. After a long time of taking in information and languages, I came upon the following dilemma: when I played flamenco I felt at home, but I lacked that freedom only improvisation gives; I also found that many of the traditional techniques of the Spanish guitar were not meant for improvisation, neither had they been created at the age of the electric guitar. Therefore, it was very difficult for me to express the same idea with the Spanish guitar. I dove into a search to generate a bond between these two instruments which fascinate me. As a result of this search, I wrote a work called Técnicas Creativas para guitarra española 1, which I later complemented with Workshops. In both works, I apply my teaching experience and keep the same dynamics as in a private lesson. By the end of 2008 I moved to Brasil, where I created the flamenco band Flamenkinho, with renowned musicians in Brazilian music such as bass player Rainere Travassos, pianist and arranger Helinho Medeiros, and drummer Riquinho Fernandes. With this band we toured stages inside and out of Brazil.. And there are many other fabulous experiences, opportunities and people which music presents me with every day, that’s why I suggest that you follow my website closely, so that you may keep up to date with all my news!!! Welcome.
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