Gerardo Núñez is the prototype flamenco guitar soloist of the generation born in the sixties, brought up with the sounds of the almighty threesome Lucía-Sanlúcar-Serranito, who got a solid flamenco background (his formative years in Jerez de la Frontera as Rafael de Águila’s student, and later accompanying none other than Tío Borrico, Terremoto senior, or as second guitar to Paco Cepero) and who later found in Madrid, thanks to his contact with other musical cultures and modernist singers such as Enrique Morente, the opportunity to open horizons going on to form part of the urban phenomenon known as the "New Flamenco".

If there is such a thing as artists’ artists, with respect to Gerardo Núñez you could say there are guitarists’ guitarists. Hailed by his profession as one of a kind, the fame and respect he enjoys among guitar-lovers is out of proportion to the discreet promotion his playing and his music has among the public at large. And it’s because Gerardo’s personality makes no concessions: flamenco guitar and its evolution is his thing, working with other high quality musical genres that are up to his level, flamenco as a musical art that knows no frontiers. With Gerardo Núñez, the flamenco guitarist has acquired the same intellectual profile of sophistication usually associated with jazz musicians, and his audience tends to be music-lovers. After El Gallo Azul (1987), forcefully breaking onto the scene with his new flamenco vision where the traditional Andalusian cadence was scarcely heard, to Flamenco en Nueva York (1989), where he made clear his inclination towards an urbane and avant-garde sort of flamenco, far from the habitual format, with a big dose of jazz and a dazzling technique, with Jucal (1994), still not giving up his desire to evolve, he returned to a more natural sound and a more conventional kind of flamenco, making this record one of the most important flamenco guitar recordings of the nineties.

His innovations therefore are structured around three objectives: the development of new ways of marking the Andalusian cadence, the utilization of innovative tunings, and the fusing of diverse forms. His Jerez touch is noticeable in the power of his thumb, arpeggios and picados in the bulería "Jucal" (‘bueno’ in the gypsy language Calé), played at breakneck speed, where he exploits the Andalusian cadence in the tone of D (re) sharp phrygian which he uses to explore new sounds.

With the piece "Hacia mí", composed with the collaboration of E. Morente and M. Rius, we have the first combined forms, from an opening rondeña with echoes in the voice of Dieguito, now known as "El Cigala", to a frenetic bulería, passing through verdiales and another slower bulería, both in the voice of El Cigala. Gerardo Núñez’ virtuosity is astounding here, as is the sound of his rapid arpeggios on the base strings: a sound which is reminiscent of Sabicas, and where as guitar-lovers say, "the guitar sounds like a piano".

In the seguiriya "Remache", a crowing glory of the solo flamenco guitar, he again uses another way of marking the Andalusian cadence, another tuning. Composed on the "toque de granaína" (B or si phrygian), instread of the traditional "toque por medio" (A or la phrygian), it was a total aesthetic shock which surprised guitar fans who then began to complain they couldn’t identify the styles at the beginning of the soloist’s pieces. That was the moment that a new impressionistic approach on the part of the composer of flamenco guitar appeared, and passed from statement to suggestion, hinting rather than saying. How can one suggest the profound nature of a seguiriya without resorting to playing "por medio", associated with the quality of ‘jondo’ or depth ever since the flamenco guitar tooks its first steps? Gerardo Núñez relies on two resources: most importantly a deep bass sound achieved by tuning down the sixth string two and a half tones, which makes E (mi) become B (si), a bass which he obsessively makes sound in his composition, a second minor dissonance in the sharps tuning the first string down a half tone so that E (mi) becomes D (re) sharp. In this way his composition used three traditional flamenco colors: that of seguiriya, given to deep sounds on the bass strings, that of granaína due to the cadence used, and that of Levante due to the utilization of the second minor interval in the sharps.

In "Marqués de Porrina", the excessively shouting voice of Ramón el Portugués is in charge of recalling the Extremaduran tangos of his birthplace and his family, while Gerardo develops some very tangoey falsetas with his thumb, and legato on the passing chords that characterize the sound of Extremadura.

In "Piedras negras" we have the second combination of styles, this time a taranta which prefaces a soleá por bulería. Again the exceptional "piano-like" sound stands out with Gerardo’s guitar, especially with the bass strings, and in the new ways of marking the Andalusian cadence over other styles. Normally played "por medio" (A or la phrygian) or "por arriba" (E or mi phrygian), soleá por bulería acquires with Gerardo an exceptional depth interpreted in the Levante tonality of F (fa) sharp phrygian. The tonality of D (re) major and the open chords that it allows is one of the favorite positions of the guitarist from Jerez.

With "Trafalgar" he composes another anthological bulería, constantly contrasting his open harmonies in D (re) minor with the close tonalities of D (re) minor and D (re) phrygian, letting go as Alain Faucher points out in El Arte de Gerardo Núñez, vol. 1 (1997) with an eloquent exercise in modulation that "goes beyong the strict framework of the original style". The third and last combination, the tangos/rumba "Isa", where he fuses Andalusian and Latino elements, executed again to a very swift tempo, constitutes another proof of Gerardo Núñez’ virtuosity, with a devastating picado used to improvise in the final chorus. Gerardo Núñez, unquestionably at the cutting edge of today’s flamenco guitar.