FLAMENCO X 2. Tomatito and Michel Camilo, guitarist and pianist. Interview

“The field of improvisation
is complicated for flamenco”

Silvia Calado. Madrid, May 2006
Translation: Joseph Kopec

Tomatito and Michel Camilo. Piano and guitar. Flamenco and jazz. ‘Spain Again’ is a two-fold project in which music and friendship have equal weight. Although a third element comes into play on this second album together: Astor Piazzolla. As Michel Camilo explains, the Argentinean composer is the “record’s cornerstone”. The jazz and flamenco standards complete a repertoire in which the surprising chemistry existing between the Dominican pianist and the Almería-born guitarist is displayed, which can even be felt in this conversation. Music, friendship, work, respect, complicity... All the ingredients are ripe for artists from distant worlds to once again find a meeting point on that unlimited map which is music.

Tomatito (Fotos: Daniel Muñoz)

What moved you two to make this second encounter materialize?

Michel Camilo. It’s been six and a half years since the premiere. We toured for four years; two before ‘Spain’ and two afterwards. Then we thought each of us would return to his focus, to his usual work: he to the flamenco world, and I to my jazz and classical music projects. We wanted to let the matter rest a little and let ‘Spain’ roll on by itself. But in each concert the fans started begging us to know when the next one would come out. The audience is to blame. I was doing a new project, he was doing a new project, and nevertheless, people were constantly asking for ‘Spain’. And last year, specifically in The Hague at the North Sea Festival, he’d been hired with his album ‘Aguadulce’ and me with my album ‘Solo’, and the promoter cunningly proposed that since we were going to be there anyway, why didn’t we set up a big-time exclusive concert with ‘Spain’.

Tomatito. And after four years without playing together, at that.

Michel Camilo. We even wondered if we were going to remember (jokingly).

Tomatito. We remembered, we played, and well at that. And the ‘Spain Again’ project came out of that.

Michel Camilo. We had a really good time that day. That’s when we decided to start working on this new album. The name, already two years earlier, Fernando Trueba, who saw us do an encore at Galapajazz, said that if we ever recorded another one some day, we’d call it ‘Spain Again’. And so he was the one who named it, without anyone having decided anything; not even the repertoire.

Tomatito. Then we agreed on the repertoire. I was doing ‘Adiós Nonino’ by Astor Piazzolla and when he heard it he asked me if I liked his music. And I said I did, that I had songs in my repertoire that I’d done on the guitar in Japan and Seville. And he told me to keep it, that he also loved Piazzolla and if we had a good look at him, we could record it.

Michel Camilo. Of course; that’s something really valuable.

	"When talking about jazz, connecting ‘Spain Again’ to ‘Spain’ came to mind right away, so we wanted to do something with Chick Corea"

Tomatito. I did ‘Adiós Nonino’ and he added ‘Fuga y misterio’, since on the one hand there’s the escape, the classical genre, and on the other the mystery, that little thing it has at the end, that mellow cadence it has after all the speed. And ‘Libertango’, as he says, “toque macho”. (And he sings softly) Pa-pa-pa-ro-pa-ró.

Michel Camilo. I’d already heard ‘Libertango’ done by Gary Burton, Paquito D’Rivera, Giorgio Amat... And I thought we could also do something worthwhile. With Piazzolla we already had the album’s cornerstone, which everything is supported on, the trunk. The rest, I told Tomate it’d be good to have originals by both, and at the same time jazz standards. When talking about jazz, connecting ‘Spain Again’ to ‘Spain’ came to mind right away, so we wanted to do something with Chick Corea.

Tomatito. ‘La fiesta’.

Michel Camilo. It was all really natural, flow of consciousness...

Tomatito. We decided on ‘El día que me quieras’ by Carlos Gardel. But we do it like an introduction to Piazzolla. Something so personal and so pretty, we do it as a ballad and then we cut right in.

Michel Camilo (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Michel Camilo. Starting off the album directly with Piazzolla was going to be a bit much. We wanted to do a sort of prologue, a sort of preface before the film starts, like the background credits. It reintroduces what we do together. And nonetheless, there’s a variation. I asked him to begin the record solo. He asked: “How?”. Yeah, then you’ll hand it over to me; you invite me to enter the room. The album narrates a story from one side to the other. And at the end there’s an epilogue: a song by Juan Luis Guerra, ‘Amor de conuco’. He, a great fan of the duo, had a special pass to come into this dream since he had a pass Camarón gave him when recording ‘Amor de conuco’.

Tomatito. On ‘Soy gitano’, with Ana Belén.

Michel Camilo. He told us he was a great fan of Camarón and Tomatito. And besides a singer, he’s a great guitarist. He connected with all of this and besides, we’ve known each other since we were kids. It was something that came up with me a priori at a concert in Boston, where I got up on the platform with him. And I told him Tomatito was coming to New York to record. “Hey, I’d really like to be there in the thick of it”, he told me. And I told him, well then, join us. And if you want to, sing on the album, too. Tomate’s going to love you being there. “And what shall I sing?” Well, ‘Amor de conuco’, the one Camarón sang for you. “And how shall we do it?” Oh no, we’ll do that in New York. We’ll talk about it there. He sang with us live and that was pure magic.

Tomatito. Is the album already at Flamenco-world.com?

S.C. Yeah, of course.

Tomatito. And how’s it doing?

S.C. Good... I think there are already some copies on pre-order.

Tomatito. Yeah?

Michel Camilo. The thing is that this project has kicked off like a speeding bullet. We already have a full concert agenda around Europe, the United States and the Caribbean, jazz and music festivals that signed up as soon as they found out the album was coming out...

And what is it that produces that chemistry there is between you?

Tomatito. Music, music.

Michel Camilo. Music and the friendship joining us.

Tomatito. Music, friendship, doing what we like and of course, without any competition, with the aim of pleasing ourselves and having people have a good time. The meeting point is music. They’re two different worlds, but at a given moment another world springs up besides ours.

Tomatito and Michel Camilo (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Is there one who has a harder time going into the other’s terrain?

Michel Camilo. Nooo, well, there are times when it’s hard. I give him a hard time! (Ha ha ha) And me with flamenco... I’ve been a flamenco fan for many years now.

Tomatito. The field of improvisation is complicated for flamenco.

Michel Camilo. And flamenco... I ask as I go along. I give him an unbelievable beating for me to be able to figure things out.

Tomatito. In flamenco, our musical culture is to improvise on the rhythm and something else. And they come from a musical culture in which a tonality doesn’t have this scale, but rather this series of scales. And you can use any of them. That’s what’s the hardest part for us, but we try...

Michel Camilo. He shines. Every time we get together, little by little, he understands everything. The jazz mentality is a three-dimensional mentality because a chord can have this chord, and at the same time, many more chords. And at the same time, that chord can take you not to a scale, but to many scales. There are a lot of harmonic relationships which a jazz player feeds on. But he now sees all that clearly. I simply give him a chord and he goes ahead with it.

Tomatito. I do what I can. And the truth is that I have a lot of fun. Then when you see the finished work, you like it. People are grateful for it and we end up satisfied. And we say: let’s do another one because this one was no good. And we’re on the next one right away.

Michel Camilo. The truth is that every time he uses flamenco, I die, I’m happy. I adore flamenco.

What has remained in your individual music from ‘Spain’?

Tomatito. Unintentionally, he does things. In ‘Adiós Nonino’ there’s a part he does after the descent there is to the melancholy tango. I do the melody it is and the part corresponding to it, which is the same circle, he improvises, sticking in notes which are really flamenco because the cadence is flamenco, is phrygian and calls for it. Unintentionally, we’ve absorbed it...

	Michel Camilo: “It’s also cool to have a flamenco guitar accompanying you”

Michel Camilo. It’s also cool to have a flamenco guitar accompanying you. You crave it and if I don’t go for it with him, I’m not alive.

Tomatito. And now we’ve stuck it in Flamenco-world.com’s bag (ha ha ha).

Michel Camilo. We hope the fans who’ve waited for us for nearly seven years support us now and go to the concerts. The important thing is that we’re already going on tour (see all the dates).

Tomate, how do projects of these dimensions and openness benefit flamenco?

Tomatito. To begin with, it’s beneficial because I win over an audience I didn’t use to have and then I go and play at venues where I couldn’t use to go, either. Since I did ‘Spain’, I’ve been playing at jazz festivals in Europe. A flamenco couldn’t go there, except for Paco de Lucía, who did so in his time. That’s the good thing about a project like ‘Spain’.