Torito by Jaime Mirtenbaum Zenamon

As mentioned in a previous post, I believe the composer of Torito, Jamie Mirtenbaum Zenamon, is not a common name in most classical guitar circles. He wasn’t in mine until finding this piece in the Royal Conservatory collection. Born in Bolivia to European parents, he studied guitar and composition in Israel, Spain, Portugal, and various South American countries. He also studied under the pedagogue Abel Carlevaro ^[1]https://edition-ex-tempore.de/zenamon.html. He was a teacher at the Berlin Academy of Music (HdK) from 1980 to 1992. Since then he has been a free-lance composer and concert guitarist in his own recording, composition, and concert studio in Curitiba, Brazil.

Publications of Torito

The original of this piece is from what I believe is Epigramme, Band 1^[2]https://www.edition-margaux.com/en/de/epigramme-band-1. I cannot find the song list of the original book. The arrangement of this piece appears in the Royal Conservatory series before 2018. Moreover, this is where I found the original source reference for the above book. The piece is copyrighted and therefore I cannot offer my own copy for you to download.

About The Piece

Torito is a lovely piece to help students work on the p-i-m-i arpeggio pattern. It utilizes shifting patterns and a drone to create interesting textures throughout. This is very similar to what we hear from Villa-Lobos compositions such as his Etude 1^[3]https://classicalguitarmagazine.com/enhance-your-technique-by-digging-into-villa-lobos/. Overall, Torito centers around an A tonality and ends on an A major chord. Aside from the arpeggio, having few left-hand movements allows for more exploration into dynamics.

Chadwick Becks

I have two degrees in guitar performance and was privileged to study under Aaron Shearer, Tom Kikta, David Skantar, Ken Karsh, Tim Bedner, and currently Christopher Berg. Outside my editorial work on this blog, I teach full-time across many genres including classical, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and metal.