About Me
Pablo Villuendas comes from a classical musicians' family and was trained as such since he was 6, first by his father on the violin, then by Simon Rowland-Jones on the viola at the Royal Northern College of Music.
As a classical musician he has performed many recitals in England, France and Spain covering repertoire pieces from Baroque to Contemporary Music and has played in many Masterclasses and Workshops for relevant performers such as Donald McInnes, Ralph Kirschbaum, Schmuel Ashkenazi (Vermeer Quartet), Ivo van der Werf (Medici Quartet), Yossi Zivoni and Yuri Bashmet.
He's worked as a teacher in Paris, Tours, and Madrid, has developed a wide and intense chamber music activity with several formations, and has led different orchestral viola sections.
Concerned by the restrictions in the Viola repertoire, he has made numerous transcriptions and arrangements such as the Prokofiev Cello Sonata, the Ysaÿe Solo Violin Sonatas, H.W. Ernst's "The Last Rose", the Monn Cello Concerto, and many other pieces by Shostakovich, Paganini, Sarasate, Falla, Salieri, Weber, Del Campo , etc.
In his mid twenties Pablo gets involved with the electric guitar. Somehow, the instrument had been somewhere in his heart since his early teens, and at some point, he felt he wouldn't find what he was looking for in classical music. This growing feeling led him to decide to abandon classical music and the Viola for good around 1995.
He began taking guitar lessons from Eric de Wit, a former student of Joe Pass, and playing with bands, and soon was working as a session man. He has also run a music school and a recording studio in Madrid and worked as a composer and a producer for several artists.
His musicianship and versatility have given him the chance to work and learn from major artists such as Kenny Neal or Scott Henderson, and his main influences as a guitarist are Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert King, Robben Ford, Jeff Beck and Scott Henderson, although others, probably unknown, like Francisco "Smokin" Simon (Red House), have played a major role in his musical evolution and tone development and are considered by him amongst the finest musicians.
In late 2003, Pablo moved to London, where he met Laurent Mouflier, a remarkable blues harpist. Together they create The SoulKitchen, a Blues/Funk project with the idea of merging old traditional blues with new modern ideas. His work with this band can be found here: www.thesoulkitchen.net
In early 2006, Pablo decides to parallelly retake a project idea he had begun with guitarist and producer extraordinaire Francisco "Smokin" Simon in 2002. The project had been interrupted by the creation of a double live album in which Pablo worked as a record producer. The stimulus of London gave him the right motivation and output to lay down the foundations of Cutie F, a project currently under development.
Pablo is also a record producer and a sound engineer.
