BarkellWH -> Paco de Lucia's Performance in Washington, DC (Apr. 19 2012 14:29:28)
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Last evening, I went to see Paco de Lucia's performance at the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. As usual, Paco put on an amazing display of guitar virtuosity. His group consisted of a second guitarist, a cajon player, a bass guitarist, a harmonica player, a singer, palmas, and a male dancer. Each piece was long, with many different riffs and lightning-fast picados. There was very little rasgueado or tremolo. The bass guitarist was good, and the harmonica player really put his soul into it. And, as I stated, Paco's virtuoso performance on the guitar remains unrivaled. What the performance was not, however, was great flamenco. I would call it "jazz-infused," fusion-flamenco. (I hate that term "fusion," but there you are.) In fact, my wife (who is Brazilian) and I both agreed that some of the performance sounded very much like Brazilian jazz with a bit of samba thrown in. There were riffs when Paco sounded very much like early Carlos Barbosa-Lima. I don't think he deliberately meant to, but then, maybe he did. At the end, Paco and his group came back on stage for a great encore. To sum up, It was a great performance and a fine musical evening. But if I want to listen to what most of us think of as more traditional flamenco, I would turn to Paco Pena. Full disclosure: I did not take my guitar with me, I did not run back-stage to try and catch Paco in his dressing room like some aging groupie, and I did not try to get him to autograph my (non-existent) guitar or my wife's posterior. Cheers, Bill
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