Daniel Martinez Flamenco Company Queen's Hall Edinburgh 14th December 2024 Review
Daniel Martinez Flamenco Company were at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight, the final 2024 date of their current European tour. For this tour, Daniel Martinez and the company are performing at different venues one of two already very successful productions, “Art of Believing” which won a Herald Angel award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019 and “Andalucia” which was a sell-out show at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh in 2013. Tonight at the Queen’s Hall it was a new production line-up of the “Andalucia” show that once again had the ability to captivate this audience.
This concert is Daniel Martinez’s personal tribute to both Flamenco music and the very distinctive flavours that each of the 8 regions that make up the autonomous community of Andalucia in the South of Spain have contributed to it over time. Here tonight, with Daniel acting as our guide to the birthplace of flamenco, we get a musical landscape painted of Cordoba, Sevilla, Cadiz, Malaga, Jaen, Granada, Huelva and Almeria. This journey also includes flamenco singers, dancers and a small chamber music ensemble. All of the music for “Andalucia”, including the orchestration, has been written and composed by Daniel Martinez, and this clearly shows that here is both a guitarist of great technical skills and an intuitive composer at work.
There are many flamenco guitarists out there at the moment, but there are few that have the passion for their music that Daniel Martinez shares with us in every song, and even fewer with his technical abilities as a guitarist. If you think you know what flamenco music sounds like, then be prepared to have a rethink if you come along to any of Daniel’s performances.
Here is a guitarist who is showing no weakness at all between his left and right hand playing techniques, one who seems to effortlessly switch between the different strumming and fingerstyle techniques that flamenco requires, coupled with absolute precision across the fretboard of his guitar. As a composer/guitarist, Daniel also has a sense of melody and harmony and an ability to effortlessly move between tempos and playing styles that will make many people more aware of just what a vast musical language flamenco encompasses.
The rhythm of flamenco is like a heartbeat, it is what keeps everything alive and fresh, but Daniel’s guitar is only a part of this flamenco lifeblood. Working in perfect unison with each other when required tonight were percussion, vocals, hand-claps and of course that driving rhythm of a flamenco dancer’s feet on the stage, and it is this sound in particular that Daniel on guitar was always watching so closely and improvising around tonight.
Flamenco music is a bit like listening to a little bit of the history of any of the regions of Andalucia, and tonight each of the songs and dances obviously had their own story to tell too. Sadly, I know only the basics of the cultural significance of both, and would have found a short introduction here greatly expanding my experience of the performances in places, but that did not stop anything being what it was, a display by experienced performers of authentic music, song, and dance of flamenco culture.
Although the performance line-up of this company’s shows can change at times, the three other cornerstones of this always innovative flamenco project were here tonight - singers Inma Montero and Danielo Olivera (who both also danced) and dancer Gabriela Pouso. Together with Daniel Martinez, each has an almost instinctive musical connection with one another such that it is often hard to decide where one performance is a stand-alone one as the musical and rhythmic movement between them is so often a seamless one.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This concert is Daniel Martinez’s personal tribute to both Flamenco music and the very distinctive flavours that each of the 8 regions that make up the autonomous community of Andalucia in the South of Spain have contributed to it over time. Here tonight, with Daniel acting as our guide to the birthplace of flamenco, we get a musical landscape painted of Cordoba, Sevilla, Cadiz, Malaga, Jaen, Granada, Huelva and Almeria. This journey also includes flamenco singers, dancers and a small chamber music ensemble. All of the music for “Andalucia”, including the orchestration, has been written and composed by Daniel Martinez, and this clearly shows that here is both a guitarist of great technical skills and an intuitive composer at work.
There are many flamenco guitarists out there at the moment, but there are few that have the passion for their music that Daniel Martinez shares with us in every song, and even fewer with his technical abilities as a guitarist. If you think you know what flamenco music sounds like, then be prepared to have a rethink if you come along to any of Daniel’s performances.
Here is a guitarist who is showing no weakness at all between his left and right hand playing techniques, one who seems to effortlessly switch between the different strumming and fingerstyle techniques that flamenco requires, coupled with absolute precision across the fretboard of his guitar. As a composer/guitarist, Daniel also has a sense of melody and harmony and an ability to effortlessly move between tempos and playing styles that will make many people more aware of just what a vast musical language flamenco encompasses.
The rhythm of flamenco is like a heartbeat, it is what keeps everything alive and fresh, but Daniel’s guitar is only a part of this flamenco lifeblood. Working in perfect unison with each other when required tonight were percussion, vocals, hand-claps and of course that driving rhythm of a flamenco dancer’s feet on the stage, and it is this sound in particular that Daniel on guitar was always watching so closely and improvising around tonight.
Flamenco music is a bit like listening to a little bit of the history of any of the regions of Andalucia, and tonight each of the songs and dances obviously had their own story to tell too. Sadly, I know only the basics of the cultural significance of both, and would have found a short introduction here greatly expanding my experience of the performances in places, but that did not stop anything being what it was, a display by experienced performers of authentic music, song, and dance of flamenco culture.
Although the performance line-up of this company’s shows can change at times, the three other cornerstones of this always innovative flamenco project were here tonight - singers Inma Montero and Danielo Olivera (who both also danced) and dancer Gabriela Pouso. Together with Daniel Martinez, each has an almost instinctive musical connection with one another such that it is often hard to decide where one performance is a stand-alone one as the musical and rhythmic movement between them is so often a seamless one.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com