Chano Domínguez: Flamenco Sketches in San Francisco

SF Jazz presents a concert by Chano Domínguez, who has found a singular niche as a Flamenco pianist.

While already a star in his homeland, Spanish Flamenco jazz pianist and multiple Grammy nominee Chano Domínguez won an international following with his appearance in Calle 54, the award-winning 2000 documentary about Latin jazz.

Born and raised in Cádiz, a hotbed of traditional Flamenco, Domínguez started his career as a progressive rocker in the popular Andalusian band Cai. Attracted to jazz by fusion pioneers like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report, he was also inspired by the earlier works of Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk. But Domínguez has found a singular niche as a pianist in the language of Flamenco, with its constituent forms of tangos, tanguillos, alegrías, compass de bulerías, fandangos and soleas —tackled through the lens of the post-bop tradition.

The keyboardist quickly became a dominant force in European jazz, leading an acclaimed trio and collaborating with artists including Paquito D’Rivera and Wynton Marsalis, with whom he recorded Vitoria Suite alongside guitar genius Paco de Lucía. In tribute to the enduring influence of Miles Davis, Domínguez brings his fresh arrangements of So What, All Blues, and Freddie the Freeloader steeped in the soul-searching Iberian concept of duende, as documented on his 2012 Blue Note release, Flamenco Sketches.