Alex Henderson

Michel Camilo 

By Alex Henderson

 When two musicians with radically different backgrounds come together, there are often concerns about how compatible they will be. The musicians might find that the gap separating them is too wide—or on the other hand, they might find some common ground and develop something that is truly fresh and interesting. Very much an example of the latter, Spain finds Dominican jazz pianist Michel Camilo and Spanish flamenco guitarist Tomatito providing a jazz/flamenco hybrid that is as fresh-sounding as it is unorthodox.

“Tomatito came into my world, and I came into his world,” the 46-year-old Camilo asserts. “And together, we tried to do something that had not been done before and have some fun with it. Spain is very different from any of my other albums, and it’s very different from any of Tomatito’s albums. The spirit of this record is two musicians trying to develop something new and challenge ourselves. I enjoy the element of surprise.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that musically, Camilo and Tomatito come from two very different worlds. Camilo, who grew up in the Dominican Republic but has lived in and around New York since 1979, is a straight-ahead acoustic jazz pianist who incorporates a wide variety of Latin and Caribbean elements and has cited Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Art Tatum as some of his main influences. Tomatito, however, lives in his native Spain, where he was born into a family of Gypsies and is recognized as one of the country’s top flamenco guitarists.

But as different as their backgrounds are, Camilo and Tomatito also have a lot in common. Camilo loves flamenco, and Tomatito is a major jazz enthusiast. Both of them appreciate a variety of Latin music—Camilo’s music, in fact, has underscored his love of Afro-Caribbean music (especially calypso and soca) as well as Spanish flamenco, Afro-Cuban salsa, Dominican merengue, Brazilian samba, Argentinean tango and other forms. Put the two instrumentalists together, and you have an intimate duo that has been an exciting experience for both of them.

“Even though flamenco music sounds improvised and has some improvisation, it’s more structured than jazz,” Camilo explains. “So Tomatito has done an amazing job of learning to improvise the jazz way. Jazz was a whole new world for Tomatito, but now, he feels very much at ease. His big advantage is that he has a very open mind. Tomatito doesn’t listen to flamenco exclusively—he also loves jazz, and he loves listening to Chick Corea and to guitar players like Pat Metheny and George Benson.”

“In Spain,” Camilo continues, “a critic said that Tomatito and I met each other half way—he departed from Spain, I departed from America, and we met somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. We kept our roots, and by merging our sounds, we came up with a new sound.”

Camilo and Tomatito have known each other since the early 1990s, when they met in Spain at a session for an album by the nuevo flamenco group Ketama. Camilo was making a guest appearance on that album, and Tomatito was hanging out in the studio. Although they quickly became friends, Camilo and Tomatito didn’t actually start performing together until 1997. That year, an organizer for The Barcelona Jazz Festival in Barcelona, Spain asked them how they would feel about performing a duet on stage. The duet would be a tribute to the Spanish hard bop pianist Tete Montoliu, who had recently died and was among Spain’s top jazz improvisers.    

“What they had in mind was a jazz/flamenco collaboration, and Tomatito and I were both interested,” Camilo recalls. “The set was divided into three parts. I would play solo piano, Tomatito would play solo flamenco guitar—and for the third part, we would play together as a duo. After that, Tomatito and I were being invited to play together at jazz and flamenco festivals all over Spain—and it wasn’t long before the word spread to other countries and we were playing together in Japan, Switzerland and Italy as well.”

With Camilo and Tomatito having performed over 40 concerts together by the Summer of 1999, a studio album was inevitable. So in August 1999, they traveled to a studio in Stamford, Connecticut to record Spain. “At first,” Camilo remembers, “Tomatito was concerned about recording this album in America—he felt that flamenco guitar had to be recorded in Spain to get the right sound. But I told him, ‘Trust me—it can be done in America.’ And now, he loves the engineer I use in Connecticut.”

Throughout the album, Camilo and Tomatito enjoy an undeniably strong rapport. This is evident on melodic interpretations of Chick Corea’s “Spain” and the Consuelo Velasquez standard “Bésame Mucho” as well as several pieces by Tomatito, including the flamenco rumba “La Vacilona” and the bulería “A Mi Niño José” (which Tomatito wrote in celebration of the birth of his son José in 1997).

“The bulería is one of the foundations of flamenco, and Tomatito wrote that bulería right after his son was born in 1997,” Camilo notes. “Tomatito has six children—the first five were girls, and when the sixth child, José, was born, he finally had a son. Can you believe that José is only two and a half years old and is already starting to play around on a small guitar?”

Meanwhile, “Aire de Tango” and “Para Troilo y Salgán” were both written by the Argentinean jazz guitarist Luis Salinas, whose writing has sometimes underscored his appreciation of the late tango innovator Astor Piazzolla. Camilo notes: “Anibal Troila and Horacio Salgán were two legendary tango players from Argentina, and Salinas wrote that song for them. ‘Para Troilo y Salgán’ is a modern Argentinean tango, not a traditional tango.”

On his straight-ahead jazz albums, Camilo has often done most or all of the writing himself. But on  Spain, the only Camilo composition is “Two Much/Love Theme,” which he wrote for Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s  Two Much (a romantic comedy that came out in 1995 and starred Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith).

Throughout his career, Camilo has never been afraid to look all over the world for musical inspiration. Born in Santo Domingo on April 4, 1954, Camilo came from a very musical family and started out playing accordion before switching to the piano at 16. In 1979, a teen-age Camilo moved to New York, and it was in the 1980s that he spent three years as a sideman for Cuban saxophonist/clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera.

The bilingual Camilo (who speaks both Spanish and English fluently) made his recording debut as a leader in 1985, when he recorded Why Not? for Japan’s King label. In 1986, the pianist recorded Suntan for another Japanese label, which was also called Suntan—and in 1988, he recorded his first American release when he provided the self-titled Michel Camilo for Portrait/Epic. Several more critically acclaimed albums for Epic or Columbia followed, including On Fire in 1989, On The Other Hand in 1990, Rendezvous in 1993 and One More Once in 1996. In The All Music Guide to Jazz, critic Scott Yanow describes Camilo as “one of the most stimulating jazz pianists to emerge in the mid- to late 1980s."

Camilo, who studied at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, also has strong credentials in the classical field. At 16, he was playing with the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic—and when he was 33 in 1987, the same orchestra invited him to conduct a classical recital that included the works of Beethoven and Dvorak. In fact, some of Camilo’s jazz composing and playing has reflected his interest in classical music—both European and Latin American.

Tomatito, meanwhile, has an equally impressive history. Born José Fernandez Torres in Almería, Spain in 1958, Tomatito is the son of flamenco guitarist Tomate and the nephew of flamenco guitarist Niño Miguel. Coming from such a highly regarded family of Gypsy flamenco musicians, Tomatito learned from the best at an early age and went on to accompany such flamenco singers as Pansequito, Enrique Morente and José Menese.  But Tomatito is especially famous for the 18 years he spent accompanying the famous Camarón de la Isla, who was among Spain’s most revered flamenco vocalists of the 20th Century. When Camarón died from a heroin overdose at the age of 41 in 1992, there was a feeling of heartbreak throughout Spain. It was a tragic, senseless loss that hit flamenco lovers as hard as the murder of John Lennon had hit the rock world in 1980—in fact, it’s been said that when Camarón died, a piece of Spain died with him.

Tomatito made his recording debut as a solo artist with 1987’s La Leyenda del Tiempo, and he went on to record other successful solo albums like 1991’s Barrio Negro and 1997’s Guitarra Gitana. Camilo stresses that while flamenco is Tomatito’s specialty, the guitarist—much like himself—is very open-minded and has eclectic taste in music. And that open-mindedness is evident throughout Spain, which was released in that country in March 2000 has been among Spain’s top-selling albums in both the jazz and flamenco departments.

“In Spain, the interviewers have often asked me what jazz and flamenco have in common,” Camilo says. “I tell them that in jazz, there is the blues feeling—and in flamenco, there is what they call a cantejondo. The word cantejondo describes a certain feeling—in Brazilian music, they call it saudade. It’s usually a lament, comparable to blues feeling. Cantejondo isn’t something you can learn in a class; it’s something you have to feel. And when you have that feeling, it gives you goosebumps.”

Camilo continues: “I love flamenco music, and I’ve always wanted to get closer to it. By exposing yourself to different music, you grow as a musician. If you stay in a coocoon, you find it harder to be enthusiastic about your music—and audiences know when you’re not enthusiastic. When I’m playing with Tomatito, I know that my enthusiasm comes through. Spain is a project by two good friends who decided to play together, see how far they could take it and see how much they could discover about themselves.”♦♦



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