Flamenco v The World

Tomatito and Michel Camilo, live at the Barbican, Nov 15th

This was one of the most anticipated concerts at this year's London Jazz Festival. Discovered by Paco de Lucía, Tomatito hails from Almería, in the east of Andalucía, and at 48, is one of the leading flamenco guitarists of his generation. Michel Camilo, a native of the Dominican Republic, is regarded as the pre-eminent Latin American jazz pianist. Putting the two together is seemingly a recipe for a sublime evening of highly controlled chaos. Both are strongly influenced by the music of Astor Piazzolla, and started their set with Libertango. The programme combined another two Piazzolla compositions, an amazing performance of Fuga y Misterio and Adiós Nonino, with compositions by both artists from their second collaborative album, Spain Again (the first one, if you're wondering, was called Spain). Both players traverse the various realms of Latin American, Spanish and jazz music with ease, but their playing is always strongly rooted in their respective Spanish and Caribbean roots, which makes for a fascinating contrast of playing styles and rhythms. Tomatito's guitar playing speaks for itself, but Camilo's piano playing at times leaves you completely speechless, switching effortlessly from tango, to rumba, to salsa, to blues, and sometimes even playing more than one of these at a time. You feel you could ask him to play The Sound of Music over a bossa nova beat and he'd probably throw in some bluegrass for good measure.

Definitely worth the three standing ovations.