2012 · Album
En Vivo Conciertos: Live in Spain 2010
Recorded Live, 2010, Spain · Verify original label if certain; omit if uncertain · Produced by Verify if certain; omit if uncertain
The Master Still Playing His Way
Paco de Lucía at seventy, proving he had nowhere left to prove and everything left to give.
By 2010, Paco de Lucía had spent five decades redefining what flamenco guitar could be. He'd already crossed into jazz, collaborated with John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola, produced records, and basically written the modern playbook for acoustic guitar virtuosity. So what's the point of a live recording at this stage? The answer: there isn't one to make. He's just playing, and that turns out to be reason enough.
En Vivo Conciertos captures de Lucía in Spain doing what he'd always done—moving between pure flamenco and the jazz-inflected material that made him famous. The recording doesn't break new ground. It doesn't need to. What you get instead is a master working in his element, with the kind of ease and precision that only comes after thousands of hours. The guitar sounds warm and immediate, the kind of close-mic'd intimacy that makes you feel the finger work, the pick attack, the geometry of his approach. He plays with a band here, not solo, which gives the material more breathing room than some of his earlier recordings.
In his catalog of forty-five albums, this sits where most late-career live records do—valuable mainly if you already care, less essential if you're new to him. It's not the place to start; that would be one of his classic studio records from the seventies or eighties. But if you've spent time with his work and want to hear how he sounded at seventy, healthy and unfussy, this delivers exactly that. It's not a farewell or a statement. It's just Paco de Lucía playing live in Spain, and sometimes that's everything.
