[3] After two years of imprisonment, García was released ($50,000 was paid by the Kennedy administration to Fidel Castro and returned to the U.S., where they became a concert guitarist and educator, performing worldwide with major orchestras, including the Havana Symphony, Los Angeles Sinfonietta, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and the Dupont Consortium in Washington D.C.

He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show[4] and founded the first academic department dedicated to classical guitar at the University of New Mexico.

[6] García studied with Emilio Pujol (a pupil of Francisco Tárrega) and he was appointed assistant in 1969, not only to improve his mastery of the guitar and vihuela but also to help Pujol develop musical materials and notes and to conduct master classes attended by advanced students and performing artists worldwide.

On November 27, 1973, La Mañana, a newspaper in Lérida, Spain, published this review of a concert Héctor García gave (translated by Lew Critchfield).

On more than one occasion we have questioned the motives and influences of today's concert guitarists as to the exclusion of the "Sonatas" and Fantasias" of Fernando Sor.

An answer might be, as overheard in a discussion between a professor regarding the past with the judgement of a performing guitarist, that the length of such works and the difficulties in the conscientious study of them require of concert players a deep understanding and importance in the history of the guitar, the societal atmosphere of the entire period and the esthetic currents governing artistic expression.

In another vein, the music of Sor (Sonatas and Fantasias) is out of phase in relation to our present day mindset and practices, actually we lack the foundation necessary.

Regarding this we find the meritorious programming by Héctor García in which he included one of the most interesting sonatas by the Catalán composer Fernando Sor.

For this reason it deserves to be studied and offered to the public to hear such admirable polyphonic qualities expressed on the guitar.

García's special attribute is his spirituality and his full and confident consideration of the logic serving Art on the guitar.

Héctor García, convinced that the excellence of sound produced by the fingertips and following Tárrega's example, in a single stroke revived the long lost art and its rewards.

This writer is fully convinced that the matters written of at the beginning of this review requires a "Pujolistic era" something we have desired for a long time.

The repercussions, like a rock thrown in the middle of a pond, spread his music throughout the international guitar world.

In Héctor García we saw today a guitarist who is perhaps the best prepared to reveal the principles of Tárrega on the concert stages of the world.