Paco de Lucía’s legacy celebrated at 23rd Annual Flamenco Festival New York

Ten years after the passing of Francisco Sánchez Gómez, better known as Paco de Lucía at only 66 years old, the legacy of the Spanish guitarist was celebrated in grand fashion with five nights – preceding his anniversary of his death – of events around New York. The timing was doubly fortuitous. From 1 to 17 March would be the 23rd Annual Flamenco Festival New York, fêting the art form that de Lucía helped make an international phenomenon. And even more significantly, 24 February saw the announcement of an archival album released BMG Spain in partnership with the Paco de Lucía Foundation: Pepito y Paquito, 1959-60 recordings by a then-11-year-old Paco with his 13-year-old singer brother Pepito, the earliest extant document of the siblings and predating their first official 7” EPs, the three volumes of Los Chiquitos De Algeciras, by a year, and featuring the solo guitar piece ‘Bulerías Niño Ricardo’.

Flamenco has changed greatly over time, moving away from the Romani folk tradition of vocal accompaniment to mix with Spanish classical guitar, becoming more heavily instrumental and performative, mirroring the nearby development in France that birthed Manouche jazz.

The first half of the de Lucía celebration at Le Poisson Rouge on 21 February spoke both to Flamenco’s roots and then its modern incarnation, in reverse order. A Spanish trio of guitarist José Miguel “Josemi” Carmona, bassist Javier Colina and percussionist Israel Suarez “Piraña” Escobar played five pieces that demonstrated both remarkable instrumental facility and the highly tactile and inherently dance-like aspects of modern Flamenco. Carmona and Colina – sounds like a Spanish law firm – are old friends, having recorded together in various formations, including as the duo De Cerca, since the turn of the millennium. That experience was evident in their dialogues, doubled melody lines and rasgueado flourishes. What was especially nice was that the music contained dynamic shifts and open spaces, virtuosity actually in service of something rather than as a means unto itself.  

Unfortunately for this reviewer, the audience, as it usually the case at ethnic events in New York, skewed heavily Hispanophone, so the banter, apparently some of it quite hilarious, “pasó por encima de mi cabeza”. As such, the titles of the first two pieces went unknown but three that followed were either immediately recognisable or announced: Chick Corea’s ‘Spain’, which opened with one of the aforementioned guitar-bass conversations before dropping into a waltz feel recalling Miles Davis’s ‘Flamenco Sketches’ rather than the more typically hyper readings of the tune; the Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz standard ‘You and the Night and the Music’, its jazz swing replaced by Flamenco swirl and featuring a fervent cajón solo; and, oddly enough, Irish traditional lament ‘Danny Boy’ in a reading that would not have been out of place on The Muppet Show.

Next, to great fanfare, legendary Flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela was introduced; he is a contemporary of de Lucía and has employed both Carmona and Colina. Rather than play through an amplifier like Carmona, a microphone was carefully placed in front of his instrument, and one could feel a venerable grace coming from his fingers. But, after a five-minute piece with the trio and a standing ovation, Habichuela left the stage to the surprise of everyone, especially Carmona.

This initiated the final segment, introducing singer Sílvia Pérez Cruz. First, she duetted beautifully with Colina, who also sang, then with the whole group on a samba-esque ballad and then the longest piece of the night, a nine-minute dance of shifting tempo and energy. Unsurprisingly Cruz received the loudest and most sustained applause, but her presence muted the impact of the trio behind her, maybe making things more anachronistically authentic but not as interesting.