Paco de Lucia

Two years after they recorded Friday Night in San Francisco, John McLaughlin, Al di Meola and Paco de Lucía reunited for another set of acoustic guitar trios, Passion, Grace and Fire, If this can be considered a guitar "battle" (some of the playing is ferocious and these speed demons do not let up too often), then the result is a three-way tie. This guitar summit lives up to its title.

The Paco de Lucía Sextet is a flamenco music sextet, formed by renowned guitarist Paco de Lucía and other musicians. The band has released three albums. In 1990 Paco de Lucia released Zyryab, an album made with his sextet and also featuring jazz pianist Chick Corea.

Fabulous guitar in name and fabulous guitar in sound; along with a carefully selected repertoire, which shows off a refined panorama of the Flamenco toque offering an intelligent variety of genres for this his first full length album as a solo artist. The titles of the tracks selected show his great connection to the land, offering us a selection of the fundamental styles of the Flamenco geography: ‘Triana’, ‘Cádiz’, ‘Punta Umbría’, ‘Jerez’, ‘La Unión’, ‘La Caleta’ and ‘El Tajo’. Recorded when Paco was just 19, in addition to the use of the Flamenco techniques of the time (reverb, echo, etc.), here there is a superb sense of the compass of Flamenco, a fabulous right hand technique (thumb, alzapua, strumming), dizzying picados and perfect legato of the left hand.

A showcase of Paco De Lucia’s mesmerising Montreux Jazz Festival live performances between 1984 to 2012. The audio has Expertly restored and remastered in superlative HD audio; The Montreux Years is released on superior audiophile heavy weight vinyl, MQA quality CD and in HD digital. The Montreux Years is released as part of a brand new Montreux Jazz Festival and BMG collection series “The Montreux Years”. The collections will uncover legendary performances by the world’s most iconic artists alongside rare and never-before-released recordings from the festival’s rich 57-year history, remastered in superlative audio.

Loose and spontaneous, this (mainly) live album is a meeting of three of the greatest guitarists in the world for an acoustic summit the likes of which the guitar-playing community rarely sees. Broken up into three duo and two trio performances, Friday Night in San Francisco catches all three players at the peaks of their quite formidable powers.

In 1982, Paco put on a series of concerts with jazz pianist Chick Corea. Corea was a considerable influence on him in the 1980s and he and McLaughlin adapted a version of his piece "Spain", performing it live together several times in the mid to late 1980s.

Since Almoraima (1976) Paco had not recorded an album which we could call authentically Flamenco. Not like his early recordings, which centred on classic guitar toques as played in concert. On Siroco, he abandons for the moment the sound of The Sextet to mark out in eight pieces the new vanguard of Flamenco creation. A record for lovers of good music, a mature and worthy work.