Focus and Discipline?

Deep, heartfelt, complex and yet easy to listen. Not disciplined?, maybe true, but whoever listened to flamenco music would know that "focus and discipline" are not two of its major assets. This album has all the discipline and focus that flamenco music can handle, beautifully woven into each song, taking you in a mediterranean journey without you even noticing it. Two thumbs up for this album!

Flamenco for people who doesn't like Flamenco

This album is a curiosity in the sense that the spanish guitar (which is almost always the main instrument in this gendre, and in which some players like Camaron de la Isla are reknowed for their virtuosism), is replaced with a piano. Apart of being a curiosity in that sense, this album is just great. While keeping the flamenco "deep feeling", it remains "not too ethnic" (I sometimes feel other flamenco vocals as "overactuated"). And I am most impressed by the piano performance (emulating a guitar with a piano seems not easy, and it is done with precission and feeling). Two thumbs up! That's Flamenco even for people who doesn't like Flamenco !

Diego Amador’s last name translates loosely into English as “lover.” His album title, Piano Jondo, translates loosely into English as “deeply felt piano.” The photo on the cover shows him shirtless, with downcast eyes and black, flowing tresses cascading down over his naked shoulders. And yet Amador records on the Milestone label, so you know he’s not some kind of goopy new age guy. On the contrary, it turns out that he’s something of an experimentalist, a pianist of substantial gifts working to expand the musical language of flamenco (a style of music not usually associated with the piano at all). To that end, on Piano Jondo he plays a variety of bulerías, soleás, and other typical dance pieces, imbuing all of them with an idiosyncratic rhythmic freedom and effusive romanticism that is somewhat at odds with the more controlled passion of traditional flamenco. It is also, to be perfectly frank, just a bit tiresome. The solo piano piece “Pa los Viejitos” is sprawling, impressionistic, and something of a mess, as is “¡Vivan los Gitanos!,” a densely complex and thoroughly impressive tour de force of technique that somehow ends up being not much fun at all (though the special effects he pulls out toward the end of the tune’s 12-minute length really are a hoot). “Soleá del Churri” and “Comparito” are more engaging, though, and the album overall is certainly not a failure. It just feels like it needs more focus and discipline. – Rick Anderson