“Addicted” to the flamenco guitar, beware: the great Paco de Lucía (1947-2014) still plays… The eighth installment of The Montreux years (BMG) star of the brilliant flamenco guitarist at the prestigious Swiss festival: performances that dazzled audiences for that combination of virtuosity and heartbreak of his guitar.
The disc material it is based on his performances in the 1984, 2006 and 2012 editionswith compositions from his usual repertoire such as Alta Mar, I just want, La barrosa, Variations of extraction AND Let’s go with exquisite sound quality.
In statements to the EFE news agency, His family recalls that something “complex” has come. to that first festival appearance, which he always had big names ranging from jazz, with Miles Davis, to pop, with Princespanning various genres and notable artists.
“Paco couldn’t read music like the rest of the artists, even if with temperament and perseverance he made his way among the greats”. This is evident in this compilation which is part of a series that began in 2021 and which records presentations by Nina Simone, Etta James, Muddy Waters, Marianne Faithful, Chick Corea, Monty Alexander and John McLaughlin.
Opinion of colleague, John McLaughlin
Precisely, McLaughlin said of the flamenco artist: “Many superlatives have been written about Paco de Lucía and they are all true. I have played hundreds of concerts with Paco in the Guitar Trio, along with Al Di Meola in a duet with him and feel well qualified to write about one of the best friends in my life.
“Paco was not only a guitar genius, but also an exceptional human being. I haven’t read music, but I’ve never met a musician with such impeccable hearing. Furthermore, his thirst for knowledge and his experience have allowed him to expand the traditions of flamenco music. Paco’s influence can be felt in almost all flamenco guitarists today”.
His widow, Gabriela Canseco, stressed at the time that the publication of this album approached the 75th anniversary of his birth, which makes the album a little more special. “It’s a very nice gift, because in addition to being unreleased recordings for the public, spans 30 years of career with the two accompanying sextets, his cronies as he called them,” Canseco said.
“For him – added the widow – this album would have been very important because what he most appreciated was the diffusion of flamenco and this album does it on an international level”.
The seven cuts chosen among the eight visits he made to the Montreux festival over a period of nearly 30 years.
From the first, in 1984, to the last in 2014, “they allow us to appreciate its evolution, but at the same time verify that both the first and last of the album sound equally important, because his music was like that. Not even the one from ’84, being the oldest, is no more modern than the last one, the one from 2012,” said his nephew Antonio Sánchez.
According to his relatives, his time in Montreux left indelible memories for Paco de Lucía. “It’s that he’s shrugged off the best of the music scene, like Miles Davis, who was a neighbor in the dressing roomor producer Quincy Jones, with whom he went to dinner because he laughed a lot with him.
Of course neither his widow nor his nephew dare keep any of the moments immortalized in the album, just as he would not have done either. “He valued everything he did and hated every performance of him, because he suffered so much for perfection, as you see in every song on the album,” they agree.
The album has added value not only because of the performances it develops at the Swiss festival, but also because very little unreleased material by the artist has been found since his death. “There must be something left from some other theater that can give us more surprises like this, but only living material. I wish there was more from him,” concludes Canseco.
Source: Clarin
