About Anthony Garcia

Anthony Garcia began playing guitar at the age of 11 in 1982. It was in 1987 - 1988 that Anthony first listened to both of the great flamenco guitarists Paco de Lucía, and Paco Peña.It was then that flamenco began to spark his interest.

Though born in Los Angeles, Anthony grew up in San Diego and took flamenco guitar lessons with Rodrigo Flores, Paco Sevilla, and later John Moore, aka Juan Moro. While at USD, he spent some time studying classical with Robert Wetzel but discovered that flamenco was the style that gave him the widest structure within which to find expressive freedom, musically speaking. More about this on the About Flamenco page. For various periods of time, Anthony has sat in flamenco dance classes to learn the elements of flamenco accompaniment necessary to the style.

After spending 8 years as a research assistant and technician at UCSD, The Salk Institute, and BrainCellsInc., Anthony decided the time had come to answer the call to dedicate himself to music and to share it with others in performance.

In the winter of 2006, Anthony began gigging and has developed a unique, engaging repertoire which covers a very wide variety of styles and textures and that fits a very wide spectrum of events.

Since 2006, Anthony has been able to work with talented local artists such as Sam Johnson (Bass), Miles Shrewsbery, Marco Emtesali, Antonio Luna, and John Martin III (all percussionists), Scot Taber and Kevin Romero (Guitarists), Reyes Barrios, Richard Chavez, Kristina Cobarrubia, Erika Lopez, Patricia Lotufo, Karina Velasco, Briseyda Zarate, Carrie Purcell (La Chispa) (all dancers) and even flamenco vocalist and dancer Oscar Valero.

Over the years, Anthony has developed a strong musical repertoire with Scot Taber and Sam Johnson that utilizes material "written" by today's greatest flamenco guitarists such as Gerardo Núñez, Vicente Amigo, Rafael Riqueni, Chicuelo, José Antonio Rodríguez, Manolo Franco, Ramón Jiménez, Paco Peña and several others. Scot and Sam have aided Anthony in writing and arranging charts to guide the harmony and to delineate melodic and rhythmic ideas performed in the tunes. The charts also contain common chord progressions and rhythmic patterns used to accompany flamenco voice and dance so as to follow and respect the logic of each flamenco song form as it has traditionally been performed.

Anthony and those he is privileged to work with bring these concepts as well as improvised material to each and every event at which they are booked.