BMG has announced the next installment in The Montreux Years series with “Paco De Lucía: The Montreux Years,” to be released Friday February 24, 2023 and available to pre-order now.
The new album is a collection of Paco De Lucía’s finest live performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival between 1984 to 2012. The releases have been restored and remastered, and the company points out that Paco De Lucía: The Montreux Years will be available in multi-format configurations, including audiophile heavyweight vinyl, MQA quality CD and HD digital.
One of the world’s most celebrated flamenco guitarists, Paco De Lucía helped legitimize flamenco music across the world and was one of the first flamenco guitarists to have successfully crossed over into other genres of music including classical and jazz. Described by Eric Clapton as a, “titanic figure in the world of flamenco music,” and De Lucía was noted for his fast and fluent picados, as well as his abstract chords and scale tones with jazz influences.
According to BMG, these innovations saw him play a key role in the development of traditional flamenco and the evolution of new flamenco and jazz fusion. At the age of 18 De Lucía recorded his first album La Fabulosa Guitarra in Madrid. One of his greatest musical partnerships was with the Spanish singer Cameron de la Isla in the 1970s. Together the two men recorded 10 albums, which inspired a New Flamenco movement.
Throughout his career, Paco De Lucía played at the Montreux Jazz Festival many times and remains one of the festival’s most iconic musicians to play the Swiss festival. The performances from this new collection are curated from eight shows between 1984 to 2012. Encapsulating his time at the festival, Paco De Lucía: The Montreux Years opens with the 2012 live performance of Vámonos.
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