David Peña Dorantes, Cante de las Minas, La Unión

The fourth Gala night at Cante de las Minas 2012

The fourth Gala night at Cante de las Minas began with the artist David Peña Dorantes, one of the foremost ambassadors for flamenco fusion and flamenco piano in the world.

Born in Lebrija, Sevilla, in 1969, Dorantes comes from a distinguished family of flamenco artists, a family steeped in the traditions of profoundly purist andalucian flamenco, his grandmother, La Perrata, her brother, Perrate de Utrera, his father Pedro Peña "tocaor", recognised as one of the greatest experts in flamenco of his day.

And in the background other influences, including his uncle, El Lebrijano, who also broke ground with his work combining flamenco with Algerian musicians, to create powerful music with exotic rhythms and the passionate ache of flamenco refrains.

Dorantes grew up with flamenco in his life, music as much a part of his daily rhythm as breathing, its complex  forms instinctive, instilled from birth as the heritage of a musical family, and following a musical path was more of an inevitability than a conscious choice.

Both himself and his brother, Pedro, began on guitar, taking formal lessons, underpinned by training from their father, and he achieved great success, winning several major competitions, but once the piano came into his life there could be no other mistress, and the guitar became a means merely to earn money to buy his first piano.

Studies followed, classical music, a formal classical piano training which opened new paths, new continents, new influences, and gradually he developed his own pieces, fusing his flamenco soul with jazz, classical, Bulgarian Folk music, Galician, Asturian, Celtic, Brazilian, creating a new unique sound which rapidly gained recognition, his first public performance as a pianist being in 1991 in front of the King and Queen of Spain.

The piano was a brave step out into the unknown at this point in time, an era when young, emerging artists were breaking from the rigid constraints of classical flamenco, striking out in search of new means of expression, bringing new instruments into what had hitherto been a closed world of defined forms and rhythms.

Experimental musicians began to fuse flamenco with new instruments, dancers breaking boundaries, Israel Galvan taking flamenco dance to a new audience, bringing in shape and form to create a sharper, modern form of expression, his body an instrument of interpretation. Dorantes broke the mould and created a whole new generation of young pianists, fusing jazz with flamenco, creating music which broke boundaries and confused the purist critics, unsure how to classify this new form of rippling sound, performed on uncharacteristic flamenco instruments. He said at the time, " instruments arent born flamenco instruments, instruments never stop being flamenco instruments. The people who play the instruments are the ones who have to feel the flamenco,"

In 1996, supported by Sir Yehudi Menuhin,  he presented Orobroy in the Festival dArt flamenco de Mont de Marsan, in France, a widely acclaimed work which launched his career within the Spanish domestic market, recording the album of the same name between 1997 and 1998. Its a compelling album, powerful, complex, varied and totally unique.

During the subsequent four years he continued to experiment and develop as an artist, collaborating with musicians from the jazz world, as well as with the Ballet Nacional de España.

In 2002 he again broke the mould, bringing orchestral music into his flamenco compositions, presenting the album Sur, an album recorded in Seville, Paris and Bulgaria which wove complex orchestral compositions with classical romanticism, added a dash of ethnically influenced instrumentation, a whiff of jazz and fused it together with jarring flamenco rhythms.

The album attracted critical acclaim and a string of awards including the award for best instrumental disc from Flamenco Hoy for 2003.
A collaboration with the national flamenco ballet from Tokyo took him on a tour through Japan in 2005, as well as a benefit concert for Save the Children in the Royal Albert hall in collaboration with El Cigala. In 2007 he closed the Sadlers Wells Flamenco Festival, and in 2008 undertook a nationwide tour of Japan with the Tokyo National Orchestra to present the work, Sur Sinfónica. He closed 2008 performing in Womax, and began 2009 performing in the Midem Talent Jazz in Cannes, followed by critically acclaimed performances in New York, Washington, Brussels, the Boston Music festival and the prestigious Montreal Jazz Festival.

Soon afterwards, he was invited to the Israel Jazz Festival by Noa as an invited artist, an invitation leading to the Hispano - Israel  project, which took him on a tour around the major Jazz festivals, including an invite back to Montreal to close the 2012 Jazz festival, the Spoleto Festival USA and a collaboration with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Qatar to perform Sur Sinfónico in the National Theatre of Qatar.
In May 2012 he launched his third album, Sin Muros, which includes collaborations with some of the great names of flamenco.
In July of 2012 he performed here in Murcia at the San Javier Jazz Festival.

For this performance at La Unión, Dorantes was joined by dancers Pastora Galván and Joaquín Grilo, delivering a set entitled " A piano abierto, "which fused tracks from various albums: amongst them the guajira “Atardecer”, the soleá “Silencio de Patriarca”, the bulería “Sin Muros”, “Orobroy” and the bulería “Semblanzas de un río”, a very jazz-orientated concert which certainly surprised some who had seen him at the San Javier Festival just a couple of weeks beforehand, at which he had delivered a flamenco driven set with the empathetic vocals of his cousin, Esperanza Fernández.

Whilst the San Javier Jazz Festival set pampered more to the tastes of those who embrace fusion flamenco jazz, the tracks performed at La Unión were definably more jazz orientated, the only concession to flamenco,  the dance, although again, these 2 dancers break every rule in the traditionalists book of flamenco.

Pastor Galván is the sister of Israel Galvan, who performed here in La Unión a couple of years ago, and has shaken the world of flamenco dance with his innovative and groundbreaking approach to flamenco, elements of which were clearly visible in the movements adopted by his sister. Both of these artists have enjoyed major international success and continue to work on a number of important projects, both as traditional flamenco artists and the more vanguard fusion flamenco enjoyed on this evening at La Unión.

The jazz tilt on this concert was a surprise to some concertgoers who had expected Dorantes to perform some of his more flamenco-orientated works in the Catedral del Cante, particularly given that his latest album, Sin Muros,  includes collaborations with some of the greatest names in flamenco today, such as José Merce and Arcángel. Sin Muros is a masterful album, with a less jazz driven emphasis on the work, reflecting the international audience that Dorantes work attracts, the variety of instruments and voices used on this album a fusion of concepts and musical elements.

Some of the purists who have been attending flamenco performances in La Unión for the last 50 years were bewildered by the evolution of flamenco and the hybrid fusions which attract larger audiences than the music which began the musical journey to create Sin Muros, seeing little beauty in the quasi-grotesque movements and positions adapted by contemporary fusion dancers.

But artists like Dorantes continue to experiment and create, bringing a unique and innovative energy to music, delivering a performance which defies classification and introduces a new audience to traditional flamenco by default.

Leaving the audience to the traditional, following his set, performances by 2 artists who have both won the coveted Miners lamp at La Unión, Rocío Marquez and Miguel de Tena, a balm for the souls of the bewildered purists, frayed around the edges by an evening of contemporary fusion and innovation.

To see the gallery of images and reports from Cante de Las Minas 2012, Click Cante de Las Minas