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Jueves Flamencos Cajasol Text: Gonzalo Montaño Peña. Guitar: Juan Manuel Cañizares; Bass: Íñigo Goldaracena; Percussion: Rafa Villalba; Dance and castanets: Charo Espino; Dance and cajón: Ángel Muñoz. Guitarist Cañizares opened the series Jueves Flamencos, subsidized by Cajasol, with a concert titled “Cuerdas al Alma”, in which the musician presented his most recent work of the same name. The evening was dedicated to the people of Japan due to the family ties that link Cañizares to that country. The recital began with a guitar whispering “Añorando Presente”, a fantasy that gives an idea of the creative and musical moment where this guitarist finds himself at this point in time. Atmospheric music, sweet and resonant, in search of an aesthetic to give new life to his sound, at times overly based on his amazing ability to work the fingerboard of the guitar at astonishing speed.
Also from his latest record, and more in keeping with his classic vein, was the bulería “El Abismo”, with picados and contemporary harmony, an area where Cañizares is a true intellectual of sound. However, the excessive percussion (two cajons and three palmeros), with the volume turned way up, served to drown the sound of the guitar, turning the side dish into a main plate. One of the styles this Catalonian musician dominates is tangos, which is the rhythm where he is completely at home and lays out his technique with breathtaking ease. Although in pieces like “Puente Arpegiado” he shows his command of the fretboard, his overall product seems too dependant on the work of Paco de Lucía, a sound which, despite having been extremely revolutionary at one time, is no longer novel, and even sounds predictable. At this point he played one of his masterpieces, “Lluvia de Cometas”, a modern-sounding rumba in the flamenco-jazz vein that the genius from Algeciras made fashionable. This was one of the best moments of the evening. The bass of Basque musician Goldaracena, managed to do the job, resonating and backing up the melody line, while providing a harmonic rhythmic drone in the best of taste. The rest of the musicians didn’t quite add a lot to the recital, and even took importance away from the soloist without enriching the whole. The ballad “Lejanía” was another good-sounding piece, and somewhat defined the above-mentioned sound we hear on the guitarist’s new recording. From his record “Punto de Encuentro”, the most innovative piece was perhaps “Toca Madera”, a rumba in half-time that did a fine job of summing up this guitarist’s virtuosity and identifying style. As for the rest, repetitions of well-worn musical paths, solos based on cadences and melodic motifs that are repeated again and again, and hands which touch the strings at the speed of light but which, despite the guitarist’s best efforts, at least in this recital, had little to say.
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