Classical Guitarist. Born in Linares, Spain, he was fostered to his aunt and uncle as a child, and it was they who oversaw his education. Initially given instruction in cello and piano, he showed a marked preference for the guitar despite the lack of teachers for the instrument. Largely self taught, he was instrumental in changed the perception of the denigrated guitar as being only suitable for folk music to something for the classical concert stage. In 1909, at the age of 16, he gave his first public performance at the Centro Artístico in Granada. Concerts in Cordoba and Seville followed. In 1912 he gave a recital at the Ateneo in Madrid. From 1919 to 1923 he toured South America, and by 1924, he debuted in Paris to great success. He deliberately enlarged the instrument's repertory with transcriptions of works originally written for lute, vihuela, and harpsichord by such composers as Couperin, Rameau, and Bach. In 1926 he performed in Russia and Britain, in 1927 in Scandinavia, in 1928 was his first tour of the United States, and in 1929 debuted in Japan. He made his first commercial recording in 1927. He married Paquita Madriguera, a noted pianist, in 1935, and the couple fled Spain under death threats when the Spanish Civil War erupted the following year. His support for Francisco Franco all but ended his American tours, but the dangers of travel during the up coming war isolated him in South America where he sought to improve the guitar's repertoire through arrangements and collaborations with composers though correspondence. He and his wife collaborated on two important guitar concertos before the marriage fell apart. After the second World War, he recorded more often, and was often on tour of Europe and the US; a schedule that would become a standard for the next thirty years. Throughout his career, he taught guitar master classes as part of his mission of propagating the instrument, but his teaching technique was not universally well regarded, rather, dogmatic and authoritarian. He nevertheless was undoubtedly instrumental in the elevation of the guitar, performing concerts well into his old age. His last concert took place in Miami, Florida on April 4, 1987. He died at his home in Madrid two months later at the age of 94. 'Andrés Segovia: An Autobiography of the Years 1893–1920' was published in 1976. A biography, 'Don Andrés and Paquita: the Life of Segovia in Montevideo' by Alfredo Escande was published in 2012.