Guitar: Miguel Ochando, Alfredo Mesa. Percussion: Cheyanne.

Juan Vergillos
photos: Málaga en Flamenco

MELODIES IN TIME

A classic recital of traditional guitar.  In the old sense of the word, both in repertory and staging.  Granada guitarist Miguel Ochando is one of the few contemporaries who remains faithful to the classic concept of guitar-playing.  He has spent years immersed in the production of a recording with the same title as this recital that was offered at Málaga in Flamenco, scheduled to be on the market some time next year.  For this reason he was included in the series “Seven Records”.

Ochando brings us back to guitar as it was in the first half of the twentieth century, when the concept of guitar as a concert instrument was first formed.  And it returns us to that ambience, that golden era.  Kinder, gentler times.  Today’s guitar flies at the speed of light, both creatively and technically.  Hundreds, thousands of variations come from today’s guitar.  To be forgotten immediately.  The musical phrases of contemporary concert guitar, for the most part, lack weight.  To such an extent that even the interpreter tends to forget them and move on to create new ones: it’s a sign of the times.  Disposable art.  With the rare exceptions readers are thinking of right now.  Ochando looks for something more long-lasting and transcendental.  To something that is worth remembering because it has substance and creative logic.  A commitment to the future so to speak.  A newly-invented language.  A complete grammar.  That is what Ochando remembers.  The creators of this grammar are Ramón Montoya, the first one, with that sauve classic sound.  And Niño Ricardo and Sabicas.  The former, Sevillian barroque wherein detail is everything.  The latter, with impetus.  Montoya has always been remembered for his rondeña, which is a basic piece of the vast flamenco structure, the ‘well-tempered clavichord’ of flamenco guitar, or an example of how to use concert technique in flamenco.  Something we now take for granted.  Ochando’s interpretation is respectful and distant, he sets the melodies in time, in times past.  With the distance of a lover, of a disciple.

He does Sabicas’ soleá, splendid, sober, and cantiñas full of light and color.  Niño Ricardo’s moorish zambra, halfway between kitsch and affection for a city.  And the grace and charm of Mario Escudero and Esteban de Sanlúcar.  In other words, a recital charged with contained emotion for lovers of this genre, its history and its ability to transcend.

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Special MÁLAGA EN FLAMENCO