Pedro Ricardo Miño's american voyage,
and the odd dream

Fernando González-Caballos/Silvia Calado Olivo

An angel crossed Pedro Ricardo Miño's path. It was four years ago when, during Seville's Biennial Flamenco festival in 1998, he met "a man with good connections in the American music world and with record labels". That meeting, a mere anecdote at first, "meant that when my run in the show 'Infinitud de Formas' (An infinity of forms, together with my parents - the guitarist Ricardo Miño and the flamenco dancing bailaora Pepa Montes) was up, this man turns up in the dressing room to present me with an envelope full of airplane tickets". And that was how the six month tour was hatched, a tour in which the young flamenco pianist took his special recipe to cities like New York, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles or San Diego.

Although he thanks God for having passed the American test and put it behind him ("because so much time by yourself... there really were moments of some despair"), he considers, without absolute sincerity, that the experience was "magical". During his voyage he had the unimaginable opportunity to meet musicians as great as Ravi Shankar, Chick Corea, Zakir Hussain or John McLaughlin, "with all of whom I played or swapped ideas which could be valuable for the future".

Pedro Ricardo Miño and Ravi Shankar

His attraction to world music, just like his attraction to flamenco, started at home. Pedro Ricardo Miño relates that "my father has always been a lover of Indian music". In fact, "when he was still a young man he stayed on his own in New Delhi on his way back from a Japanese tour". For a time he was even "learning to play the sitar". And he acknowledges that this adventure "made him even more attracted to that music, to the point where he got me hooked too". And to draw his own conclusions about that crossover: "I don't think there can be anyone today who still doubts that a link exists between flamenco and Indo-Pakistani music".

But fusion without confusion. The musician from Seville assures us that "when I've played for audiences, it's been sticking to what I know how to do, which is just playing flamenco piano". And it's paid off: "Ravi Shankar always asked me to play him seguiriyas". "To play jazz there are the geniuses like Chick Corea or Michel Camilo", he adds, but flamenco is his thing. "I have to stand up for my roots, to bring flamenco piano the level of recognition it deserves in the world of music", he promises.

With this conviction he embarks on his forthcoming projects, which he prefers not to speak about yet, so as not to tempt fate. Even so, he reveals that "I've received various proposals to record an album, but I still need to follow them up because I want to do something ambitious and different from what's out there". He thinks that "my experiences in America with the musicians I met could be a great help in defining the project, but right now I can't say any more". And he still hasn't shelved his international wanderings. France has been another of the pianist's conquests, when he took his compositions to the Mont de Marsan Festival, to 'Voix du Flamenco' at Grenoble and Paris, with an added appearance at Luxembourg's Conservatoire. Plus there's preparation afoot for a fourteen-concert tour of Japan. And still further ahead, the part two of the dream: "In March I may travel to India for four concerts with a well-known percussionist from Calcutta".