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"Crossroads"
("Cruce de caminos").
Flamenco
Bienal of Seville
Esperanza
Fernández, Gerardo Núñez and New York Flamenco Reunion
MEANDERINGS
(WITH BLACK AND BLUE NOTES)
Directed
by guitarist Gerardo Núñez, who converges jazz, flamenco y something
else at the "crossroads".
The special guest
from Armenia, Arto Tuncboyaciyan, opens the show with a guttural vocal exchange
from mountain to welding song: doing martinete and debla, Esperanza
Fernández continues singing to José Bergamín in tarantas
that smother the band with the saxophone of Perico Sambeat.
Esperanza Fernández y Javier Colina
"Crossroads"
is the title of the soleá por bulerías with hints of seguirias
that the energetic Gerardo plays out, gravitating toward be-bop on his various
solos. After the solo on frying pan, glass bottle, and other unknown instruments,
the prestigious guest (resident in of the USA) draws the best smiles of the Bienal.
He continues into "Transatlantic," by Gerardo, which in spite of the
bad equalization of the bordones featured an upright bass.
Esperanza Fernández
brings back a piece that Rosalía de Castro sang in the show, "A
oscuras " ("In the Dark") (Enrique Morente,1994),
singing lullabies with the piano of Évora; here she is accompanied by George
Colligan, the solid New Yorker. Gerardo comes out announcing the seguiriyas
that Esperanza sings with mouth ajar, as the great Javier Colina softly scratches
the noble arch of the contrabass.
Esperanza Fernández
The New York Flamenco
Reunion (in quartet, without McGuill, some five years since the band’s conception)
plays a version from Thelonious Monk, not included their recent debut album. Marc
Miralta, who drops down from the drums to the cajón, directs the delirious
but precise transition from bulerías to tangos, driven by
the Magrebi vision that Gerardo depicts in "Sahara", off his latest
album, "Calima."
To top off the
exhausting session, Esperanza sings a difficult Neruda adapted by the pianist
to rhythms of alegrías for the New York Flamenco Reunion, and the
percussionist, plays with condiment bottles over the finishing tanguillos.
Progressive, most definitely like King Crimson in their day.
Luis Clemente
Translated
by Jessica Lorber
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