TRANCE SKETCHES - TRANCE LANDSCAPE

Following Jorge Pardo’s musical footsteps requires having an open mind about styles and genres as well as having a remarkable level of trust in humanity. As you may already know, he fluctuates between flamenco and jazz, although in recent times, he has also introduced elements of electronic music as well as musicians from different latitudes that can be appreciated in the film “Trance”, the documentary about Jorge Pardo directed by Emilio Belmonte which is the origin of this album.

At the beginning of the eighties, we thought that Jorge could enter to that jazz university that were Art Blakey’s “Messengers”. We witnessed how a Russian man (Valery Ponomarev) was replaced by a guy on a suit and tie named Wynton Marsalis. Back then, us “the young critics” bet that Wynton wouldn’t last long on the job, we got that right, and we got everything else wrong.

Jorge was starting to travel around the world with Paco de Lucía, for whom they made a documentary entitled “The Search”. The reader would think that by adding those experiences we could obtain conclusive results; the topic isn’t about mathematics, not at the moment. The musicians which Jorge plays with have two characteristics: they’re his friends and they live in excellence; some do not know each other at the beginning of the song, but by the end they seem “compadres” (best buddies). There is yet another factor that we find on the notes written by the musician himself:

“At the end of the concerts I can only say that it was a miracle... that’s how I describe these very open sessions, with a high dose of improvisation that manages to finish well meanwhile being able to fly through unknown places.”

Perhaps the miracle is in the way of looking at art and life as he exposes in “Trance”, and that lead us to an endless adventure. So several of us -Jorge Pardo’s followers- accompany him to Flamenco and there could find several exciting worlds. On the one hand, the world of tradition and classical “Cante”; and on the other hand, a world of revolutionaries such as Paco de Lucía, who amazes in all latitudes.

The flamenco world, which deeply admires Paco “The Guitarist”, would welcome musicians who came from other genres and played rare instruments as a whim, and it took several decades to recognize their careers. Meanwhile, Jorge and the musicians of his generation forged friendships around the world with superlative musicians who approached his way of seeing flamenco combining respect and audacity. That is the key to these sessions, when planning the filming of the documentary “Trance”, concluding that it had to be recorded in New York.