Mediterranean flamenco jazz at the Jazz Festival's gala fundraiser

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

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Panama Jazz Festival special