One of the qualities/defects of José Fernández Torres "Tomatito" is his stubbornness. He’s made up his mind to be a flamenco guiar soloist and he’s making it happen. A virtuoso of modern guitar accompaniment, comfortable and happy alongside Camarón, the latter’s premature death left him out in the cold and with a difficult dilemma: whether to continue in his role of star accompanist, or to set out on a difficult solo
career.

After a few attempts at accompanist (with Morente, with Duquende, with Mercé, with Vicente Soto "Sordera", etc.) where he couldn’t quite find himself, he decided to play bridesmaid no longer, to mount his own group and try his luck with solo guitar. Now, with "Paseo de los Castaños", he’s got his approach, his sound and his orientation: rhythmic ways of expressing the music, because that’s what Tomatito’s playing is all about, a driving rhythm that scorches everything.

Three bulerías on the record, and they’re all different: "Paseo de los Castaños" with traditional playing in ‘la’, complete with falsetas, those micro-compositions, quintessential flamenco music, where we get the Tomatito of always, master and tamer of the hidden corners of bulerías. "Dulce manantial" is in the experimental tone of ‘mi flat’ where a repeated motif serves as the basis for developing variations, and even improvised sections in the style of jazz (recently recorded with Michel Camilo with the title "A mi niño José"), but where he seems to be searching for his sound and he takes what he learned with the Latino pianist to his flamenco territory. "Ahí te quedas", a little wink of the eye where Tomate appears to be saying to his fans, the ones who cheered him on when he used to accompany Camarón, "even though I’m looking for new paths, I’m not losing my old flamenco sound". The Jerez sound and toque to accompany Luis "El Zambo", and Fernando de la Morena make up this recorded message from a wine cellar in Sanlúcar with flamenco improvisation par excellence, the fiesta, which brings memories of Moraíto Chico and his records that are half guitar-playing, and half gatherings of his buddies. In the soleá in ‘mi’ called here "Alquimia", usually so laid-back in today’s soloists, Tomate conceives it with a very marked rhythm, and he approaches the threshold of bulería por soleá.

As far as two by four, we have good old tangos "Pa la Pimpi", with accustomed bass-thunking and Tomate’s special touch in the phrasing of the melodies, but where once again we sense the mature overall sound of the group, with "a little help from his friends" such as the voice of his daughter María Ángeles, the counterpoint provided
by the mandola of his "disciple" Paquete, and the percussive violin of Bernardo Parrilla. Tomate’s rhythmic blast ravishes everything, and even the samba takes on a gypsy identity when his guitar comes around, prefaced with "Aire de tango", the rumba "La
Vacilona" is an authentic anthological work in its genre showing the magnetic attraction that flamenco can have when it meets up with another musical language. When this force flows from the prism of Tomatito’s gypsy guitar and seduces George Benson’s,
the result leaves us grinning and with the urge to hear more of this kind of fraternal encounter.

Tomatito’s live performance has changed a great deal ever since he had the Carmona brothers from Ketama accompany him. At that time it was more of a sporadic gathering of artists than an actual group, but now it has become a stable group, cohesive, and recently filled out with the bass of Javier Colina, who balances bass and treble from the impetuous approach that characterizes him. It’s the construction of a sound built from an essentially rhythmic dynamic that we find in Paseo de los Castaños. Aided by Isidro
Muñoz’ production, not only in the general design of the pieces, but in the mixing as well, after some wavering, Tomatito’s sound is finally a reality.

After being an accompanist and playing only flamenco, Tomatito has decided to go down other paths and musically enrich himself. We discover an assortment of Tomates on this record: a taranta solo in "Macael" with influences of the Argentine guitarist Luis Salinas, excessively lyrical perhaps in the Turkish song "Bir Ömürlük Misafir", multiplied in his bulerías, jazz-gypsy in the rumba, flamenco in the tangos, solid in the soleá, but everything united by a common rhythmic interpretation of the music and by a consistent sound that has become his own. He has just opened these doors and already we can see the happy results. Now he has only to go on living and learning from these experiences in order to mature as a guitarist and as a flamenco so that we can continue to enjoy his music.