The first week of September 2004 has been great for Spanish guitar music afficionados in Singapore; we've had the likes of Paco Pena, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Stefano Grondona, Judicael Perroy, Peter Finger & Muriel Anderson performing at the Old Vic. You might say it was a cosmopolitan offering of acoustic guitar music - guitar masters from Spain, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, & the USA were represented - the Spanish guitar gone global.
I was at the performances of the first two: Paco Pena & Carlos Barbosa-Lima. As expected Paco's offerings were mainstream Flamenco eg Farrucas, Bulerias and Soleares. The technique was masterly; his fingers were magical in their pinpoint accuracy and his percussive strumming showed divine artistry.
Yet, the audience clapped with vigour only when he descended to the simpler tunes; the more complex ones seemed to be beyond their grasp and although he revealed a great deal of scholarship vis-a-vis the background of Flamenco culture this appeared not to have impressed them.
Paco appeared to be aware of some gap between the audience and himself because he indicated that a complete Flamenco performance would require vocals and dancing as well since he himself leads the Paco Pena Flamenco Dance Company; it would appear that as far as solo Flamenco recitals go, great performers need great audiences to appreciate them...
Carlos Barbosa-Lima seemed to have struck a chord with his audience perhaps because the music was right for them - after all everyone can appreciate the Bossa Nova, while many are fairly familiar with dance music and Stan Getz about a decade ago had introduced bossa nova to the world of jazz. The compositions of Bonfa, Jobim, Gershwin, Scott Joplin which Carlos played made for a varied and colourful platter for the Singapore audience and the clapping was raised by quite a few decibels...
My regret was not being able to take in all the performances during the Guitar Festival week kindly provided by Tomas. Let's hope it's not just feast or fasting for Spanish guitar afficionados. (Let's also hope such first-rate performances would be held at the Esplanade rather than the creaky Old Vic which - with all due respects to our heritage - cannot match the acoustics in the new place). Just a month or so before I was glad to be at the performance of Alvaro Sanchez (at the Old Vic), the Colombian Flamenco guitarist who studied with Paco de Lucia; he's settled down in Singapore apparently and would be likely to tune up our guitar scene to finer crescendos, I hope...
NB September 2005 is just around the corner and we're looking forward to the new installment of the International Guitar Festival. There appears to be a good mix
of classical, flamenco, latino & jazz styles in the offing & names like
Oscar Herrero, Fabio Zanon have appeared in the flyers...
