(noticia) New York festival puts the flame in flamenco

BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff

"When I listen to someone perform music, I want passion -- I want to feel their guts," insists Simon Shaheen, virtuoso of the oud (the Arabic lute). "That is what I hear in flamenco, particularly with a guitarist like Gerardo Nuñez, who has such fire."

Nuñez's six-string will help spark the opening of the New York Flamenco Festival as he accompanies a series of the world's top flamenco dancers Thursday and Jan. 28 at New York City Center. One of the festival's musical highlights will take place during the "Gala Flamenca" first night, when Nuñez and Shaheen team for a set of improvised duets.

The spontaneous arabesques of Nuñez and Shaheen will underline flamenco's ancient antecedents in the rich Moorish cultural legacy of Andalusia (southern Spain). Shaheen has Palestinian roots but has been based in Brooklyn as one of the country's premier performers and pedagogues of Arabic music, both in its traditional form and fused with other Eastern and Western idioms.

(leer +) [vía nj.com]