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Volume 15, Number 1
January 16, 2008

Panama Jazz Festival special

Also in this issue's culture section:
Photography, José Ponce's urban scenes
Panama Jazz Festival schedule
Sparky the Wonder Dog
Poets' Corner
More muñeco photos
Music videos, An online inauguration concert


Flamenco night at the Panama Jazz Festival
Panama's Valo Jorge pounds out a beat on the tablas, percussion instruments of Asian origin not to be confused with the tabla, a drum used in Panamanian traditional music

Mediterranean flamenco jazz
at the Teatro Nacional
photos by Eric Jackson

This reporter was in trouble. Having had a lifetime of contact with jazz, there's a certain body of knowledge to fall back upon to write about the subject. But flamenco? Hardly any exposure --- little more than an Andrés Segovia concert decades ago, wherein among the works by Bach, Ravel et al, he played some stuff he called flamenco.

What to do? A colleague from public TV told me not to worry: "It's about passion --- if you feel the passion, you'll get it."

Passion duly felt, and gotten on that level at least. This show, led by Spanish pianist Alex Conde Carrasco and singer/dancer Isabel Julve, had a combination of that relative of tap dancing that's flamenco, jazz syncopations, classical-style guitar playing, and rhythms and instrumentation from the three continents that border the Mediterrean Sea --- Asia, Africa and Europe.

This was the expensive ($150 a ticket) fundraiser at the Teatro Nacional, with the Spanish Embassy as a co-sponsor and Panama's Spanish community out in force --- by appearances the most successful of theese galas yet.


Alex Conde Carrasco


Isabel Julve, who made music with her voice, feet and hands


Bassman Haggai Cohen Milo, with Conde Carrasco in the foreground


Guitarist Juanito Pascual, a native of Minneapolis


Colombian percussionist Tupac Mantilla
 

Also in this issue's culture section:
Photography, José Ponce's urban scenes
Panama Jazz Festival schedule
Sparky the Wonder Dog
Poets' Corner
More muñeco photos
Music videos, An online inauguration concert



Make the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
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http://www.evermarine.com

© 2009 by Eric Jackson
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email: editor@thepanamanews.com or

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Mailing address:
Eric Jackson
att'n The Panama News
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Panamá, República de Panamá