We’re very sad to hear the news that the wonderful flamenco guitarist, Moraíto Chico, died this week at the relatively young age of just 54.

DeFlemanco and El Pais (here and here) feature fitting obituaries to one of the greatest exponents of ‘Jerez’ flamenco – worth reading, if only to get a sense of the great esteem and regard he was held in the flamenco world.  There are also a number of touching tributes, images and videos over at the Foro Flamenco thread.

There are plenty of Moraito videos on YouTube to discover, so I’ll leave you with just the two – a joyful piece filmed on stage in Jerez a few years ago, and a very early video of Moraito with Camarón.

Rest in peace

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Building on the success of his previous visits and performances over the past 3-4 years, Jesús is back after his busy Easter period for three days of classes at the end of May, alongside our own Ana Garcia.  This year, classes also include general choreography and body technique for levels 2 and 3, focused on body movement and expression rather than solely footwork.

Full info and a downloadable flyer follow (click below to view/download the PDF and booking form …)

Jesús Fernández and Ana Garcia

28, 29 & 30 May 2011
ACE Dance & Music
The Link Dance Space, The Ground Floor, 54-57 Floodgate St, Birmingham, B5 5SL

Flamenco Level 1 – with Ana Garcia
Saturday, Sunday and Monday
11am – 12.30pm
£60

Flamenco Level 2 – with Jesús Fernández
Saturday, Sunday and Monday
12.45pm – 2.15pm
£65

Flamenco Level 3 – with Jesús Fernández
Saturday, Sunday and Monday
3.45pm – 5.15pm
£65

Choreography and Body Technique – with Jesús Fernández
Saturday, Sunday and Monday
2.30pm – 3.30pm
£45

Bookings for classes will be allocated on a first come, first served basis and all dance classes are limited to 30 students.

Email Ana or call her on 07971 219904 for bookings or further info.

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We’re just waiting for the new book by guitarist David Leiva – The Flamenco Guitar Guide – and the rather impressive looking flamenco metronome!

We already have quite a few items queued up for review, but we’ll do our best to feature anything you would like to send – drop us an email to features@flamenco-birmingham.com and we’ll give you full details.

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The IGF (International Guitar Foundation) continues its fine work this autumn with the second London Guitar Festival of the year – this time at the excellent Kings Place, in Kings Cross.

Featuring four days of performances and workshops from leading classical, jazz and folk guitarists, the flamenco serving is presented in the shape of Javier Conde, making just his second UK appearance after playing WOMAD this summer, and dubbed as ‘the most exciting young Flamenco guitarist to emerge from Spain in decennia’.

Aged just 21, Javier started playing the guitar when he was 4 years old under the supervision of his father Jose Antonio Conde, a professional guitarist well respected within the flamenco world, and a disciple of the master Andrés Batista.  Since then, he has won countless guitar competitions and already appeared on nearly a dozen recordings.

Clearly a humble soul, his website offers a refreshing change to artists intent on blowing their own trumpet …

My professional career is not particularly long.  I am not old enough for that.  However, I would like to convey the intensity I have felt with all the experiences I have lived so far.

Beside the personal satisfaction that gives you to overcome the study of the instrument, the guitar, I have also had the opportunity to see that my work was recognized in some of the competitions I have attended and, though just for a second, I have had the privilege to be close to some of the great masters I have always admired in my solitude while I was studying.

If there is something I have understood from the very beginning is that there is much more things to learn that those you already know.

Therefore, I would like you to look at this webpage not as if I were a recognized artist who needs a way of communication with his fans, but as the webpage of a young guitarist who looks for a place in this difficult world of the flamenco guitar.  And why not? A webpage for people to know me and even to contract me.

Conde performs in the wonderful acoustic space at Kings Place on Saturday 30th October, beginning at 7.45pm.  Tickets range from £29.50 to £9.50.  There is also a masterclass earlier that day for intermediate and advanced players.

Read more on him at Flamenco-World.

Other festival performances feature the excellent jazz player Mike Outram, Grammy award-winner David Russell, Lutenist Nigel North and ‘acoustic sensation’ Eric Mongrain, fresh from an appearance on Later with Jools Holland.

Check out the IGF website and the Kings Place website for full info on the festival, tickets and workshops.

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… or the ‘candidature for inscription on the UNESCO representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’ status, to be more precise. All rolls off the tongue rather well.

Following a performance in Madrid on Monday evening, featuring Paco de Lucia, Tomatito and some important sounding Spanish bigwigs, the Spanish Government and several regional agencies have upped their campaign to see the artform of flamenco added to the aforementioned cultural mouthful.

Flamenco-World.com report on the ‘Flamenco Soy’ (‘I, Flamenco’) campaign …

While UNESCO is processing the dossier, ten thousand of people from all over the world have already demonstrated their support for flamenco’s candidacy as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The collection of signatures is being gathered at the website www.flamencopatrimoniodelahumanidad.es, with information in Spanish, English, French and Japanese. The candidacy has the backing of several hundred representatives of the jondo art and diverse public institutions, as well as the Spanish government itself, which gave its unanimous support in Parliament in May. After UNESCO communicated in February that the candidacy was “technically complete”, it is now being evaluated by the international organization. The final decision will be made at the next meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which is scheduled to be held in November 2010 in Nairobi (Kenya).

It appears that UNESCO rejected the ‘flamenco’ bid once before – some five years ago, with the latest bid team from Andalucia now calling for international and public support to ‘see that Flamenco finally receives the international recognition it deserves.’

You can sign-up and support the flamenco corner at the official website - flamencopatrimoniodelahumanidad.es … it only takes a few seconds to add your name.  You can also find some nice audio of the main traditional flamenco palos.

You can also take a peep at the impressively in-depth UNESCO website for Intangible Culture, which lists the many existing cultures on the list, along with some great audio, video and info for each and every element – from the Shadow Theatre of Cambodia to the Gong Culture of Vietnam!

Meanwhile, TypicallySpanish.com reports on the Madrid gig …

Paco de Lucía got a standing ovation from the crowd, which contained numerous celebrities and politicians who are supporting the initiative, including the ministers, Manuel Chaves, Ángeles González-Sinde, Bibiana Aído and Trinidad Jiménez.  Also present was the President of the Junta de Andalucía, José Antonio Griñán. He said over the weekend that while flamenco is universal, its birthplace is Andalucía.

Other flamenco artists in the crowd and supporting the campaign are singer songwriter, Diego el Cigala, dancer Sara Baras, and the guitarist Tomatito.

The concert ended with Paco de Lucía’s most famous piece, ‘Entre dos Aguas’.

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The tasty-looking London Guitar Festival is fast approaching in just under two weeks time, running over the weekend of 14th-16th May on the South Bank.  The excellent programme includes the great flamenco pairing of Gerardo Núñez and Carmen Cortés; the first UK visit for many years of the unsurpassable classical ensemble, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ); the multi-talented Amit Chatterjee; folk singer-songwriter Chris Wood; and notable classical players Andrea Vettoretti, Amanda Cook and Phillip Villa.

Guitarist Núñez and dancer Cortés have performed together for a number of years (not a great surprise, as they’re married!), and play the festival as part of their own quintet on Saturday 15th May, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.  Flamenco-World describes Núñez as composing ‘enormously rich and complex music, without loosing the strength of the flamenco reference, and he performs himself with the technical capacity of a real virtuoso. Some of his creations are lavishly beautiful.’  Cortés, meanwhile, is described as ‘moving at ease between the classical flamenco and the modern one. She has been the first bailaora to make a choreography of a “Granaina”, a flamenco “Palo” with a free rhythm.’

Tickets for the performance are priced from £18-25 (concessions available), and begins at 7.30pm. According to the South Bank website, ‘when Nuñez and Cortés perform together there is a unique dynamic and heightened level of communication that can only come form the closeness of husband and wife.’  The mind boggles …

There’s also an interview with the couple on Esflamenco from 2007.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet – probably the foremost guitar ensemble in the world – appear on the Sunday night in the same hall, playing the UK for the first time in a number of years, after extensive recording and touring just about everywhere else, so a great coup for the festival.

Their programme includes a Brazillian slant in the shape of music from Jobim, Villa-Lobos and Baden Powell, plus their famous arrangement of Bizet’s Carmen Suite.  Tickets are priced the same as the previous night’s flamenco.

The full weekend performance and workshop programme is online at the IGF and South Bank websites, and well worth checking out.

The festival is produced by the International Guitar Foundation (IGF) – an organisation ‘dedicated to the promotion, understanding and enjoyment of the guitar, its music and artists.’  The IGF runs festivals in London, Bath and the North East, alongside summer schools in Bath, Cheltenham, Gateshead and London.

Here’s a Gerardo Núñez Sevillana clip (on an ad-hoc visit to his patio) to keep you going …

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Birmingham’s biennial International Dance Festival is now in to its third week, and so far appears to have been a great international triumph.

There’s ongoing coverage over at the well produced festival website and also updates at West Midlands Dance to digest, but it’s worth noting the range of venues, variety of events and scope of artistic programming have really done an excellent job of bringing together a proper festival – not just a bunch of conservative shows in over-priced, high-brow venues, but a real effort to bring new, varied and genuinely interesting work to the venues and the streets for free.

In addition to the acclaimed visiting stage productions at Birmingham Hippodrome, Rep, DanceXchange and Town Hall (The Observer has already hailed Akram Khan’s Gnosis production as this year’s ‘most enthralling programme of dance’), there has a been a big programme of events across the main city squares and streets.

The Invisible Dancin’ strand has been running most days along High Street, Birmingham, at 1.00pm and 4.30pm, and continues until Sunday – not to give too much away, but it’s well worth trying to catch the flash-mob style emergence of an improvised dance movement along the street, accompanied by a growing number of excellent busker-like jazz and folk musicians, including the appearance of renowned international jazz saxophonist Paul Dunmall last week.

The big-budget Utopia drew good crowds to Victoria Square, evolving daily over the bank holiday weekend, and involved 40 international dancers from India, Russia, Africa and Spain, alongside the ever-tremendous fifteen-strong Birmingham-bred band The Destroyers.  Utopia produced a fantastic range of new choreographed dance, sets and performance over several multi-level stages, somewhere in between a trippy Alice in Wonderland meets Clockwork Orange, all enacted to Destroyers’ tracks and commissioned compositions from Frank Moon.

The flamenco workshops have also pitched local artists alongside their international counterparts, with Ana Garcia and guitarist David Shepherd working with the visiting flamenco dancer Olga Pericet through the bank holiday workshops, pulling participants from across the UK and Ireland. Olga’s Madrid-based Chanta la Mui play this Wednesday and Thursday at Town Hall.

There’s much more going on across the city with the festival running until the weekend – check out the festival website for lots more info.

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Taking place at the DanceXchange at Birmingham Hippodrome, the workshops take place between Saturday 1st and Monday 3rd May, featuring a taster class for beginners, and a general choreography and body technique class for students with some previous experience, focused on body movement and expression rather than footwork.  Ana García is also teaching over the weekend.

FLAMENCO TASTER CLASS
Saturday, Sunday & Monday // 10am – 11am // £30 // With Ana García

FLAMENCO LEVEL 1
Saturday, Sunday & Monday // 11am – 12.30pm // £55 // With Ana García

FLAMENCO LEVEL 2
Saturday, Sunday & Monday // 12.30pm – 2pm // £60 // With Olga Pericet

FLAMENCO LEVEL 3
Saturday, Sunday & Monday // 3.30pm – 5pm // £60 // With Olga Pericet

CHOREOGRAPHY & BODY TECHNIQUE
Saturday, Sunday & Monday // 2.15pm – 3.15pm // £40 // With Olga Pericet

Download the booking form / flyer (PDF) here

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A very exciting collaboration awaits us in May, with the arrival of flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela and renowned jazz bassist Dave Holland at the excellent and ever-innovative Cheltenham Jazz Festival, directed by Tony Dudley-Evans.

Pepe Habichuela certainly seems to enjoy taking flamenco in several different dimensions, after his Yerbagüena album mixing Hindu music and flamenco with the Bollywood Strings several years ago – more on that here at flamenco-world.com .  Dave Holland, meanwhile,  is one of the world’s most highly regarded jazz musicians, originally hailing from our own lands of sunny Birmingham, now living in New York, but a frequent and welcome visitor to our shores.

(Just before his Cheltenham appearance, you can catch Dave performing in a very different musical setting, as part of the new Harmonic Festival in Birmingham on March 10th at Birmingham Conservatoire).

Meanwhile, Tony talks about the May performance on the Cheltenham Jazz Festival website …

There are two concerts at this year’s Barclays Cheltenham Jazz Festival that I am particularly looking forward to hearing. One is the Cuong Vu Trio gig on Sunday 2nd May which I wrote about in my last post. The other one is Dave Holland and Pepe Habichuela, the collaboration between the bass player Dave Holland and the Spanish flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela and some of Pepe’s flamenco family.

Dave Holland is of course one of the world’s finest jazz bass players. He was born in England in Wolverhampton and was brought up round Wolverhampton, Walsall and Birmingham before going off to London to study. He first started playing in bands in the West Midlands in the 1960s originally in a three guitar band and he took up the bass when he decided that he was the weakest guitarist of the trio and feared he might get the sack! He was discovered by Miles Davis in London in the late 60s and joined Miles’ band of the time. He has stayed in the US ever since, but remains a regular visitor to UK including two annual visits as visiting lecturer to the jazz course at Birmingham Conservatoire. He now leads a massively influential quintet and another very important big band. There is also an octet which has an album due to be released shortly. But the project he seemed most enthusiastic about when I have talked to him during his visits to Birmingham is the collaboration with Spanish flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela and his flamenco team.

Dave and Pepe were introduced by a mutual friend Mario Pacheco and they have been working together for a few years now, initially studying and learning from each other through mutual respect, then doing some special concerts and finally making a recording. I have heard an initial sample of that recording and the interweaving of Dave’s bass and Pepe’s guitar is magical. They are accompanied by another flamenco guitarist and two cajon players, the rhythmic box that the player sits on to play. I know that Dave is very proud of his relationship with Pepe and of the work they have done together with only musical language to bring them together; Pepe speaks little English and Dave little Spanish.

Dave says on his website, “we played the first concerts in 2007 with a group that also included Carlos Cormona on guitar and Juan Cormona and Bandolero on Cajon. There was a great feeling in the group and I loved the music we made together so we repeated the project in 2008, adding Josemi Cormona on guitar, and then again in 2009 with Pirana on Cahon.”

Pepe Habichuela is a major figure in flamenco and is part of one of the great dynasties of that music. He began in the Sacromonte caves in Granada, but is now based in Madrid. He has worked with a few other jazz artists notably trumpeter Don Cherry and Nitin Sawhney. In this project Dave and Pepe concentrate on some of the most important pieces in the flamenco repertoire.

Dave Holland and Pepe Habichuela play the 2010 Cheltenham Jazz Festival
Saturday 1 May 2010 - 7:00 pm (90mins)

Cheltenham Town Hall – Main Hall
Tickets : £22 / £20 / £17

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The clips preview both the Complot and Recital shows – more on those here

Ranging from more abstract dance to traditional flamenco and specially-composed musical accompaniment, even stretching to feature the famous El Quinto Regimiento theme, found on Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra album and Coltrane’s Ole.

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