XV BIENAL DE FLAMENCO DE SEVILLA. ‘TRES MOVIMIENTOS’ Pedro Sierra con Pastora Galván e Israel Galván

XV BIENAL DE FLAMENCO DE SEVILLA

‘TRES MOVIMIENTOS’
Pedro Sierra
Program (PDF)
26th SEPTEMBER . Teatro Central – 21:00 horas

SPECIAL BIENAL DE FLAMENCO DE SEVILLA 2008

Text: Gonzalo Montaño Peña
Photos: © Archivo Bienal de Flamenco, Luis Castilla

Guitar: Pedro Sierra; Cante: La Tobala and José Ángel Carmona; Palmas: Bobote; Percussion: José Carrasco; Dance: Pastora and Israel Galván.

Three movements to allude to the stages of a flamenco guitarist: playing for dance, playing for singing and playing solo.  The Catalonian musician went through them in reverse order compared to the way life usually brings them, starting out alone, and ending with dance accompaniment.  And he had the help of “La Tobala” singing, and the two Galván siblings, Israel and Pastora.

Pedro Sierra opened the first third of the recital with graníanas, quickly establishing his own special sound.  His guitar sounds clean, his right hand pulls off lightning picado runs and the intensity of the sound is well-controlled, sometimes strong, sometimes delicate, as in the farruca which was excellent. You can also see his fine sense of rhythm in the subtle guajira.

Sierra is a guitarist who using flamenco as a jumping-off point to find a sound to develop his musical personality, within the canons of flamenco guitar, not based on stereotypes.  In siguiriyas, he seeks out that flamenco root we all talk about, and the rapport with the percussion is total.

In the second part, we saw the accompanist facet of the musician, first with fandangos for the voice of José Ángel Carmona, a singer with nice gypsy overtones, although he began a little aggressively.  Then we saw the guitarist accompany “La Tobala” for polo and caña, who started out a little cold and off-tune, but managed finally to find her temperament.  The singer was most at home in tangos extremeños, and took full advantage of her strong voice.  The guitar is energetic and full of rhythm, but perhaps the arrangement of tangos extremeños with lute was a little outdated.

This was when Bobote came on to delight us with his bulerías dance, short but tasty and playful, and the audience loved it.  Then, the recorded voice of Antonio Mairena for Pedro to accompany his soleá.

In the dance accompaniment part, we were able to see the Galváns, brother and sister, separately and together.  First Pastora in a soleá-rondeña with a very aesthetic, sensual dance, full of compás.  Then Israel barefoot for a piece titled Belmonte where he gave full rein to his bullfighter tendencies, or maybe anti-bullfighter, it’s hard to know.  For alegrías, Sierra gave us a little jazz, but it was far from the smell of sea air.  The splashy ending was the tangos duo of the brother and sister, highlighting Israel’s capacity to dance to cante, not vice versa which is what many dancers do today, but rather answering the cante in perfect communication. It was a great ending for a guitar recital where the guitar was not always in the spotlight, and we could appreciate this musician’s great versatility.