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EMEC (Editorial de Musica Espanola) Agustin Maruri [L] is a notable Spanish guitarist and scholar, who responded to one of our reviews by kindly sending a large parcel of CDs from Maruri's own label EMEC. For a first appreciation of this bonanza I am pleased to recommend his newest release, an unique double CD of the music of Luys de Narváez [EMEC E 100/101] and to draw attention to his remarkably wide-ranging label of Spanish music, hitherto unknown to me until we by chance received and reviewed a Granados disc played by a fine pianist, Sebastian Stanley, in a sumptuous and lavishly documented double-CD. De Narvaez is a particular speciality of Mauri's and this the first substantial recording of guitar and voice music by this 16th C composer, published in 1538. Maruri considers the guitar the wholly appropriate instrument for this first complete recording of his Los seys libro del Dlphin de musica. Clearly a major scholar, Maruri has no doubt that the guitar is "a perfectly valid and legitimate instrument for historical and aesthetic reasons" for his premiering the five books of this collection of an hour and a half of short solo pieces and songs from the time of Spain's Charles 1st. But EMEC's range is astonishing, with contemporary Spanish
music (to be tackled when time allows) and world-wide duets explored
with Maruri's regular partner, cellist Michael Kevin Jones. Maybe I have just missed cello/guitar duos, but they make for
an alluring combination, with a wide range of music to explore and
enjoy, in carefully assembled in CDs of Evocations of Spain, Don Quixote & Dulcinea, Hang Wenye's Bagetelles and other century-old Chinese music; a
veritable treasure trove for college student friends seeking viable,
economical programmes for inexpensive
P.S. I now have had time to sample the others received, and recommend them all. EMEC (Editorial de Musica Espanola) is certainly a lable to bring into your radar ! Michael Kevin Jones has a good Bach suites set in a sypathetic environment in USA. Joan Guinjoan and Tomas Marco have fine portrait discs in the Spanish Composers of Today series, and you won't know most of them ! Peter Grahame Woolf
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gigs with friends... 
See also Marco's book surveying Spanish Composers in the Twentieth Century,