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Diego
Amador's talent as an artist is confirmed with this disc of - as its title
suggests - true unadulterated flamenco piano. That's not to say that it will achieve
success in the marketplace, where sales seem to bear no relation to the quality
of a product, but artistically this is a gem. 'Piano jondo' (2003), released on
the Nuevos Medios label and distributed internationally by Fantasy Records, is
a look back over the nine years of the artist's career and his two previous releases,
one hot on the heels of his success accompanying his brothers, at the head of
the group Patitanegra.
Diego Amador has made the disc just like he wanted it,
leaving out commercial tracks - the spiced-up tunes on his previous albums - and
concentrating strictly on instrumental numbers where the artist and his piano
is truly the center of attention. He's backed by a discreet but solid rhythm section,
made up of Miguel Vargas on bass and his nephew Luis Amador on percussion. Three
songs are drawn from the first album ('Anticipo flamenco', 1994), which have grown
in what seems a miraculous transformation: from fledgling ideas, pleasant and
well-proportioned, into matured, prudent and respectable works. Each one of them
is more than double the length of the cut on the original version. The tunes are
'Soleá del Churri' (El Churri is the family's nickname for the pianist),
the bulerías '¡Vivan los gitanos!' - long live gypsies, a true burst
of optimism for his own kind, and 'Seguiriya de pildorilla'.
The structure of Diego Amador's compositions sits easily
with notions of concert flamenco guitar, that is, a succession of light 'strumming'
sounds and falsetas or variations. Some of these falsetas smack more of the concepts
associated with jazz improvisation: jazz is the instrumental genre par excellence
of our times, the yardstick by which all who try to push themselves to the limits
as musicians must measure themselves. And all the more so in this case, where
we're dealing with an instrument that has a fine and rich history in the world
of jazz. A rogue, wandering spirit of adventure can be heard here - in the seguiriya,
for example, you can hear dissonance which resembles the language of contemporary
classical piano music.
From the second disc 'El aire de lo puro' (Nuevos Medios,
2001), this compilation takes three songs which, being more recent, are closer
to the original versions. The bulerías 'Comparito', the tanguillos 'El
llanto de la lluvia' and 'A mi tío Diego', one of the artist's landmark
compositions, por rondeñas. Finally 'Piano jondo' includes three new pieces.
There's a taranta with a classical twist, entitled 'Pa los viejitos', with accompanying
falsetas of traditional flamenco guitar. 'Quiero olvidarte', a soleá on
which Amador also plays mandola and sings in a voice remeniscent of Camarón
(a dark, brooding Camarón, from the late years: in a TV documentary commemorating
the tenth anniversary of the cantaor's death, Amador said of Camarón that
"he was our God"), and on which he's accompanied by the footwork of
El Grilo, giving the piece enormous richness of timbre. And 'Continuum', the only
song on the album not penned by the pianist himself, is a track by American bassist
Jaco Pastorius, set to a tango rhythm, calm but brilliant, as is everything this
prodigious musician from Seville's barrio de las Tres Mil turns his hand to.
More information:
Interview
with Diego Amador, multi-instrumentalist and cantaor
Special
featuers: Article on the launch of 'Piano jondo' at Madrid's Calle 54
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