‘Anthology’ isn't just any old collection. And the fact is that it rounds up with the first twenty minutes of concert that Tomatito recorded live. Up until now, the only chance to hear him live was accompanying Camarón on albums such as ‘Flamenco vivo’ and ‘Paris 1987’. Of course the passing of time and the unstoppable solo career of the guitarist from Almería demand a completely different project. He still conserves those trademarks, the energy and the power that define his work, but steeped in maturity, in freshness and in the consistency that his music and his band have shown over the course of time.

The real gem is track seven of disc two. Twenty minutes of an amazing concert recorded ‘in situ’ - in other words, at home in Almería. And that's just how the journey begins, with the captivating fingering on ‘Al Mariyya’ - por bulerías. And shortly afterwards, to the sound of ‘Tangos de la Tía María’, he's joined by the group that's accompanied him on so many stages in recent years: Diego Amador on bass, Bernardo Parrilla on violin, Cristóbal Santiago on second guitar, his daughter Ángeles Fernández providing vocals and a cajón - anonymous in the booklet, but that smacks of Porrina. Bulerías are back again with the live version of ‘Dulce manantial’, already one of the classics not only of his own work, but of contemporary instrumental flamenco as a whole. The epilogue comes in the shape of the rumba ‘La vacilona’, which arose from his emphatic assault on Latin music alongside pianist Michel Camilo.

And the result - ‘Spain’ and ‘Spain again’ are two of the albums drawn upon in the compilation, which suffers from a certain bias toward his recent recordings. In other words, here we only find music recorded with Universal - so not a trace of ‘Guitarra gitana’ or ‘Barrio negro’, key albums from the nineties on the Nuevos Medios label. To fill that gap, the track listing of ‘Anthology’ also includes several older pieces recorded with Camarón. And he even allows himself the indulgence of taking the vocal track from ‘Soy fragüero’ to dream up a new accompaniment. And it makes for a stunning overture. As for the rest, there are extracts from ‘Paseo de los castaños’ and ‘Aguadulce’, the two most recent releases from this guitarist par excellence whose essence is captured here in this anthology.