Celtic Connections: Celtic music meets flamenco in a festival premiere tomorrow

THE Spanish guitarist and composer Vicente Amigo may not be an Anglophone household name, but among fellow musicians his reputation is positively stratospheric.

THE Spanish guitarist and composer Vicente Amigo may not be an Anglophone household name, but among fellow musicians his reputation is positively stratospheric.

US jazz legend – and co-instrumentalist – Pat Metheny has called him “the greatest guitarist alive”. Other high-profile fans, with whom Amigo has performed or collaborated include David Bowie, Bob Dylan, John McLaughlin, Jack Bruce and Sting, along with myriad Spanish and Latin stars across similarly diverse genres.

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“I’ve never heard anybody so amazing on their instrument before,” says Scottish fiddler John McCusker, one of four leading folk instrumentalists who feature in the world première of Amigo’s latest project, Tierra, at Celtic Connections tomorrow night.

“It’s not just the technical side, though that’s absolutely astounding in itself, but he plays with such incredible passion – he really puts his whole heart and soul into it. I’m lucky enough to hear a lot of amazing musicians, but listening to him play – you’re just sitting watching genius.”

As well as McCusker’s Celtic compadres – piper, whistle player and flautist Michael McGoldrick, accordionist Donald Shaw and bassist Ewen Vernal – Tierra also unites Amigo’s flamenco-rooted virtuosity with the seasoned rock/pop expertise of ex-Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher and percussionist Danny Cummings, who’s worked with the likes of Tina Turner, Elton John and the Pet Shop Boys. Completing the line-up are Amigo’s own regular singer, cajon player and rhythm guitarist, while Fletcher has also produced the accompanying album, released next month.

Somewhat tangential as it might sound, the collaboration originated at a Mark Knopfler concert back in 2011, in Amigo’s home town of Córdoba: Fletcher and Cummings are both mainstays of Knopfler’s band, while McCusker and McGoldrick have been touring with him for the past few years.

“The way that band sounded, immediately I knew that I could mix well with them,” Amigo recalls. “Also, I loved how unique the sound of each player was: when I heard John or Mike play, they transported me to their land and I loved that, I wanted to mix it with my land – this is also why the album is called Tierra.”

Beyond Amigo’s literal “tierra” of Spain, his heartland is the national music of flamenco, but his passion is for finding new forms of expression and creative interplay within its venerable traditions – some traceable back to the Renaissance – and exacting disciplines. “Music evolves through an infinite number of ways, and different genres can be embraced together if you approach them with respect, rigour and knowledge,” he says. “I start my works using flamenco music, but I like to bring this genre closer to other musical styles to reach different emotions.”

Before he launched his solo career in 1988 – winning a string of top international guitar competitions when just into his twenties, followed by an acclaimed debut album in 1991 – Amigo’s restlessly outward-looking approach was shaped by a six-year teenage apprenticeship with the previous generation’s most innovative guitarist, Manolo Sánlucar, in whose words, “Flamenco is a philosophy, the way of thinking and feeling of a whole people and its historical tradition.”

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Amigo defines his musical ethos in more personal terms: “Aside from its particular rhythmic and melodic elements, flamenco is a way of expressing oneself. That form of expression is something which is inside of me and present in everything that I do. However, even though flamenco is a part of me that I can never leave behind, nor do I want to, I compose the music that I have inside my heart, and I really do not have such a large say in it – it is just what happens naturally.”

At a similarly instinctual level – and at the core of the Tierra collaboration – Amigo also perceives a kinship between the emotional potency of Celtic music and the key flamenco essence of duende, a transcendent intensity roughly translated as “soul” or “spirit”.

“That is why I understood the playing of the musicians in this album when I first heard them,” he says. “I believe that is what also makes this collaboration work. To many people, the idea of mixing Celtic and flamenco music may sound odd or even impossible. When you hear us play, though, it’s amazing how well they blend and how natural it sounds. Everything just flowed in an effortless way.”

Not that it felt remotely natural or effortless to McCusker when Amigo first played the Tierra compositions to his assembled musicians in the studio last year, with just six days ahead of them to record the album.

“I remember feeling an equal mix of astonishment and terror,” he says. “It was a whole musical world I’d never entered before – to begin with I could barely figure out where the notes were. It was a real challenge – everyone involved was really pushed and stretched by it – but every day you’d leave the studio totally inspired, and in the end I think we did come up with a common language.”

Achieving such a communion, without diluting or compromising the individual elements involved, is the elusive ideal for any cross-genre or cross-cultural project – so what’s Amigo’s secret? “Allowing everyone to be themselves. We all roamed free within each of our styles, and while we kept our identities and personalities, it was also evident that we travelled hand in hand.”

• Tierra is premiered at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall tomorrow night.

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