Flamenco: Requiem Flamenco: In Praise of the Earth

Arts - Music By Alexander Varty

Publish Date: April 12, 2007

In Requiem Flamenco, Paco Peña is virtuoso as well as striving composer.

Featuring the Paco Peña Flamenco Company with the Vancouver Chamber Choir. At the Orpheum Theatre on Friday, April 6. No remaining performances

Nightmares sometimes walk the earth, and one stumbled onto the Orpheum stage last Friday in the form of Paco Peña's Requiem Flamenco: In Praise of the Earth. More Frankenstein's monster than fusion masterpiece, this attempt to marry a classical choir to Andalusian folk music was a vast, slouching beast held together with rough stitching and duct tape. Unsurprisingly, it proved a poor use for the considerable talents involved.

The piece is problematic in every conceivable sense. Classical choirs, however accomplished, are essentially placid creatures, used to grazing in the serene pastures of northern European liturgical music. In contrast, flamenco has been shaped by the arid landscape of southern Spain: it's simultaneously stark and tempestuous, a music of sudden starts and stops and, some might say, considerable emotional excess. In an interview with the Straight, Peña conceded that the two styles might seem mutually incompatible but insisted that he would be able to teach his Vancouver Chamber Choir guests enough about flamenco to render his score.