November is an incongruous time of year for London to hold its annual jazz bash. In Barcelona, in contrast, the climate seems much more attuned to the music. The emotional temperature was certainly in the high nineties at Concha Buika’s recital at the gorgeously ornate Palau de la Musica.
The singer’s new album — a homage to the ranchera veteran Chavela Vargas — supplied the core material in a display that reached almost frightening levels of intensity. One of the great voices of our times, Buika bares her soul so readily that, on this occasion — when she was responding to the excitement of an audience that had greeted her as one of their own — you sometimes longed for a few more moments of repose. Even this diehard admirer would admit that her singing was raucous at times. Yet her simmering treatment of pieces such as Volver — taken from her previous disc — was heart-stopping, each phrase suspended over the stark guitar accompaniment of her producer, Javier Limon.
Earlier that same evening, across town, Bela Fleck had been serving up the idiosyncratic banjo-based fusion that we can expect to hear at the Barbican on Sunday. True, at its most self-indulgent, Fleck’s band can sound like just another slick collection of technocrats, but when the distinctive timbre of his instrument breaks through, the music veers off in a much more interesting direction.
One of the most diverting events took place away from the bandstand, when the Spanish pianist Chano Domínguez participated in a public version of Downbeat magazine’s famous blindfold test, in which a musician makes impromptu comments on a series of familiar or unfamiliar recordings. The American journalist Dan Ouellette was the amiable inquisitor. It takes courage to put one’s ears to the test in front of an audience of jazzers, but Dominguez acquitted himself well, and did not shy away from making dismissive noises about one or two well-known names.
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As for the pianist Omar Sosa’s 50th anniversary tribute to Kind of Blue, we had to work hard to catch all the references to the classic tunes as they underwent a radical Afro-Cuban makeover. Jerry Gonzalez took the role of the Prince of Darkness. Some of the more overheated pieces strayed a long way from the album’s serene contours, but Davis himself, a man who never cared much for looking over his shoulder, would probably have approved.