(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is an author, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter who lives in New York City. His most recent book is "The Year Before The Flood." Photo above: Chano Domínguez, Dec. 3, Jazz Standard. Photos in this post: (c) 2009, Ned Sublette]
In presenting his version of Kind of Blue . . . [pianist Chano] Domínguez came with a quintet format I have not seen before: bass (Mario Rossy), cajón (Israel Piraña Suárez), a wailing flamenco vocal (Blas Córdoba, also on handclaps), and a handclappper (Tomasito) who also contributed bursts of percussive dance on a wooden mini-floor set at the front of the Standard's stage. So there were only two harmonic instruments and a voice, set against a rich, brittle rhythmic conversation.
That's from a review I wrote Friday morning, posted over at allaboutjazz.com, of Thursday night's splendid performance by Chano Domínguez at the Jazz Standard in New York. Now let me back up.
Last year I played the most amazing festival: the Voll-Damm Barcelona International Jazz Festival (Voll-Damm is the sponsor). That was the festival where I spent two days with Bebo and Chucho Valdés…
…and saw their duo concert from the front row. The V-DBIJF had the temerity to book me to play a solo concert in Spanish, and they had a full-house audience for me in spite of my utter obscurity in Spain. I was on the same floor in the hotel as Al Green's band…
…and met Omar Sosa for the first time, about whom more in a forthcoming post.
Begun as a private initiative in the dreary days of Generalísimo Franco, the V-DBIJF runs for seven weeks. This year, their 41st, they did something unprecedented: the closing concert of the Barcelona festival took place in New York City, at the Jazz Standard. Festival director Joan Anton Cararach imaginatively commissioned from Barcelona residents Chano Domínguez and Omar Sosa flamenco and Afro-Cuban re-imaginings, respectively, of Miles Davis's all-time jazz-record phenomenon Kind of Blue (about which, see Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece). We're still waiting to hear the Sosa version, which premiered in Barcelona, but last week Chano Domínguez brought his Iberian bad self to Noo Yawk.
I wrote a review of the concert for All About Jazz, but I was slow with the pictures. Here's a link to the review, but my pictures are right here below. The first photo is Blas Córdoba and Tomasito, and the rest are Chano and Tomasito. And then the guy from the Jazz Standard told me to stop taking pictures
Chano Dominguez online: Myspace, official web site, Wikipedia, Amazon.
