website : http://www.guitarristajosele.com
Biography
“Paz is a love letter from Niño Josele to Bill Evans and to everyone who makes music with no other ambition than to move people with its beauty”, writes Fernando Trueba about the new album by Niño Josele. Paz is Niño Josele’s guitar inspired by Bill Evans’s piano. Two sensibilities that are born from different worlds and different music, and which come together on one of the most beautiful albums you are ever likely to hear.
“¿What is that beautiful music?”, exclaimed Niño Josele the first time he heard Bill Evans’s piano playing, recounts Fernando Trueba. From that moment on, the guitarist submerged himself in Evans’s music, listening and learning until, after a long and complex apprenticeship, he made the music his own, “reinventing flamenco guitar” at the same time, as J.M. Martínez wrote in El País.
Niño Josele was born in Almería in 1974. Bill Evans had been born previously, in 1929 in New Jersey (United States). The guitarist is descended from a long line of flamenco guitar players, while the pianist started to learn his instrument at the age of six, encouraged by his mother. Both grew up in musical environments. Different cultures but similar sensibilities in terms of finding the perfect note, the best harmony. Paz is a title that fits perfectly with the brotherhood between Bill Evans and Niño Josele, demonstrated on this album, which is produced by Fernando Trueba and Javier Limón. It is the fruit of a long genesis, and an immense dedication from the Spanish guitarist to one of jazz’s greatest ever piano players.
Peace Piece opens the album with the unaccompanied guitar of Niño Josele. The serenity and musicality that emanate from this Bill Evans composition, recorded by the pianist in 1959, are the perfect prelude to the main body of Paz: a deep connection between flamenco and jazz. The album continues with Waltz For Debby, a key track in Bill Evans’s repertoire, “you could almost say it’s his trademark”, says Trueba. Niño Josele is accompanied on double bass by Marc Johnson, who made up one third of Bill Evans’s final trio, and by Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernández on drums. By definition this is jazz, but the flamenco-style strumming and picking on this new version give the track, written by Evans in 1954, an overhaul for the future.
Joe Lovano’s tenor sax graces The Peacocks, a composition by Jimmy Rowles (1918-1996), who was Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae and Peggy Lee’s pianist. In the 80s Lovano played with Paul Motian, one of Bill Evans’s favourite drummers, and his lyricism coursesthrough this intense ballad. The voice of Freddy Cole, brother of Nat King Cole and a respected jazzman, appears on I Do It For Your Love, a track that Paul Simon recorded in 1975. Bill Evans first played it three years later, and it gains a new lease of life with Niño Josele’s guitar and some excellent work from double bassist Marc Johnson.
My Foolish Heart is a jazz classic written by Victor Young and Ned Washington. It was the theme to the film of the same name, and was nominated for Best Song at the 1949 Oscars. It was one of Bill Evans’s favourites and he kept it in his setlist from 1961 until his very last concerts. The trumpet of Tom Harrell, who played with Evans a few months before the pianist’s death in September 1980, is an example of the track’s delicacy, and justifies the words that, recounts Trueba, he uttered on finishing its recording: “This is magic, just like a film”. The Dolphin is a composition by the Brazilian Luiz Eça, picked up by Bill Evans in the sixties and now laced with Niño Josele’s majestic solo guitar playing, encompassing a complex fusion of jazz and flamenco, and rounded off with a little Granaína.
Hullo Bolinas was written by the double bassist Steve Swallow, recorded by Evans in 1973 and reinvented on Paz by Niño Josele and Marc Johnson in a duet, one of the most emotional tracks on the album. Estrella Morente’s voice lights up Minha, a track by Francis Hime and Ruy Guerra, which is backed up by Niño Josele’s solo guitar toying with Brazilian music, flamenco and Portuguese Fado. Jerry González’s trumpet and Javier Colina’s double bass accompany Niño Josele on Never Let Me Go, a track that Bill Evans recorded in 1969, while on Turn Out The Stars the guitarist delves into Bulería on a composition of Evans which is the most flamenco-sounding track on Paz. The album closes with When I Fall In Love, a classic song which has been played by many artists apart from Evans: Chet Baker, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Celine Dion, Stan Getz, Tom Jones, Marilyn Monroe... Niño Josele is once again alone with his guitar as he writes the epilogue to an exquisite, elegant and wonderful album.
“The simple fact that Niño Josele is the only person to construct a true monument to bravery and sensibility should be considered an achievement. And if the results support that, as is the case here, it becomes something superlatively passionate”, writes Miquel Jurado in El País (Babelia, 24/06/2006) about Paz, an opinion shared by all the critics. Paz is an album that marks a before and after in the language of the guitar, because, continuing with Miquel Jurado, “you only have to listen to it to be carried away by a sound that is neither jazz nor flamenco nor anything remotely similar, and yet it is both of those genres at the same time”.
Paz is Niño Josele’s third solo album and it follows the albums Calle ancha (1995) and Niño Josele (2003), as well as his collaborations with Enrique Morente, Diego El Cigala, Bebo Valdés and Andrés Calamaro. The piano of the legendary Bill Evans (1929-1980) has inspired Niño Josele’s guitar, illuminating a new and untrodden path in which all that exists, uniquely and simply, is music.
