Antonio Lauro (3 August 1917 – 18 April 1986) was a Venezuelan guitarist and composer, born in Ciudad Bolívar to an Italian immigrant father who was an amateur guitarist and singer. After the family moved to Caracas, Lauro studied piano and composition, but a 1932 concert by Paraguayan guitarist Agustín Barrios persuaded him to devote himself to the guitar; he went on to study with Raúl Borges. A committed cultural nationalist, Lauro toured with the Trio Cantores del Trópico in the 1930s–40s and was briefly imprisoned in 1948 for his democratic convictions under the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship, continuing to compose even in prison. He taught guitar at Venezuelan conservatories, served as president of the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra, and undertook a solo concert career that culminated in a celebrated 1980 performance at London’s Wigmore Hall. He died in Caracas in 1986, shortly after receiving Venezuela’s highest artistic honor, the Premio Nacional de Música.

Lauro is considered one of the foremost South American composers for the guitar in the 20th century, best known for elevating the colonial-era Venezuelan waltz (vals venezolano) — with its distinctive hemiola syncopation — into a serious concert genre for the instrument. Guitarist John Williams called him the “Strauss of the guitar.”

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Lauro