’Guitar Holiday’ is a melodic excursion to romantic places across the world, guided by Jorge Morel’s tasteful and stimulating guitar artistry. In solos and with the ensemble, the Morel touch projects a fascinating rhythmic feeling, and a warm, compelling style. Whether displaying a propulsive strength or dark, mellow moodiness, his solos are always beautifully constructed and bursting with ideas or a fertile imagination. In short, Morel plays the Spanish guitar as only a true Latin can, and his performances have been electrifying audiences wherever he appears, from Hawaii to New York’s ’Village Gate.’ In the mood-setting opener, South American Holidy, a solo original, Morel combines mellow unndertones with a gay, bubbling fiesta flavor that aptly mirrors the various facets of the below-the-border scene. A Secret emerges as a guitar conversation piece – soft, rippling and richly intriguing. Flute and rhythm join the guitar for the upbeat Legato Samba, another Morel original. Then, his arrangement of Greensleeves is appropriately soft-textured, but takes on a sense of urgency. It’s followed by Vidala, a wistful, sadness-tinged rendition of a folk song from his native Argentina. Morel’s Spring Theme closes the side in an idyllic rendition in which flute and guitar fuse the first murmurs of Spring into a vivid musical experience. The guitar helps to drive, feed and inspire the ensemble in the uptempoed Side Two opener, Sambalero. Lost In The Night has an authentic feeling of melancholy and buoyancy, floating in a world of its own. Back in Brazil, Morel lays down some good lines in the bossa nova, Easy Traveling, and his searing, unrestrained playing continues in Zamba Del Sur. This original reflects the rhythms of a gaucho folk dance that is entirely divorced from the Brazilian counterpart, the samba. Alberto Socarras’ flute adds a sense of immediacy and vitality to Love Is The Sweetest Dream, while Morel contributes a warm pianistic touch to the romantic festivities.The album concludes with a bright, crisp and almost biting attack in which the ensemble pictures the flow of traffic, both human and vehicular, during a Manhattan Holiday.