This week, I found myself back in the city to perform at the Festival de la Guitarra. As I write this, I'm waiting on the platform for a delayed train to Madrid. While the departure time keeps slipping further into the future, I am wondering how much of this afternoon I'll remember thirty years from now, when it has long since become the past.
The last time I was here, I certainly didn’t imagine that I’d still be coming to Spain three decades later, or that this country would become such an important part of my life.
The wedding in Córdoba belonged to my former babysitter, Jeff, who was marrying a Spanish woman named Mercedes after meeting her during his year abroad in Madrid. At the time, it seemed like one memorable stop for me on a backpacking trip through southern Spain with my British friend Nick.
Today, it feels like the beginning of so much.
Jeff and I had both been students of an extraordinary high school Spanish teacher in Madison named Andy “Señor” Zintel. Everyone, if they are lucky, will have at least one great teacher in their life, and Zintel was mine. He taught us not only to speak in Spanish, but also to laugh in the language, to recite poetry and read novels, to understand the politics and social movements behind the work we read. More than any other teacher I can remember, I think Zintel showed me that lived experience comes out in artistic work, and that context matters.
He taught us Borges, Usigli, García Marquez, Unamuno, Lorca. One particular verse of Lorca’s was on my tongue the first time I saw the city:
“Cordoba, lejana y sola
Jaca negra, luna grande, y aceitunas en mi alforja.
Aunque sepa los caminos yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba”
“Although I know the roads, I will never arrive in Cordoba.”
But I did arrive. As I remember it, the wedding started late and went from there. We danced and drank and smoked and ended up on the roof of our cheap hostel, and I loved every minute of it.
The next day Nick and I made our way to Sevilla. We wandered through its sweltering Moorish streets and drank sherry. The city felt almost unreal in its beauty. Somewhere during that visit, I decided I would come back one day to study there. Twelve months later, I did.
If Zintel had reoriented my life, Sevilla revolutionized it.
There is a clear before and after in my life, and Sevilla is the dividing line. It was there that I learned to dream, to fight, to beg, to express, to listen, and to love in another language. It was there that I discovered the music of Kiko Veneno, Ketama, Chano Domínguez, Paco de Lucía, Jorge Pardo, Javier Ruibal, Pedro Guerra, and Jorge Drexler.
While I was studying in Sevilla, my dad came to visit and together we went to the Granada Jazz Festival, where we met Laura García Lorca, Federico García Lorca's niece. Lorca, one of Spain's most beloved writers of the twentieth century, was murdered by fascist forces at the outset of the Spanish Civil War. Laura ran the Huerta de San Vicente, Lorca's family home in Granada, which had been transformed into a museum.
She invited Ben and me to perform there the following summer as part of the celebration of what would have been Lorca’s 100th birthday.
This summer the jazz world is celebrating the centennial of Miles Davis. In Spain, in the summer of 1998, it felt much the same for Lorca.
That concert in Granada became an album, The Concert for García Lorca, which was released in 1999. The album became a tour. The tour became a relationship with Spain that has now lasted nearly three decades.
We kept coming back, deepened friendships and became part of the musical community here. Through that journey I met Chano Domínguez & Jorge Pardo, Javier Ruibal & Jorge Drexler, whose music I had devoured in Sevilla. And through Jorge, I eventually met Leonor Watling, who is sitting next to me on this train platform today.
Looking back now, it’s almost impossible to separate one event from the next.
No Señor Zintel. No wedding. No Sevilla. No Laura García Lorca. No Lorca concert. No decades of touring Spain. No Jorge. No Leonor. No right here right now.
A few nights ago, from the stage in Granada, beneath the shadow of the Alhambra, I had the chance to thank Laura publicly. She was sitting in the audience.
“We never know what the consequence of a single moment will be,” I said. “But I can say with confidence that if it hadn’t been for Laura, my life would not have been the same.” It felt cathartic.
Then, the following evening in Córdoba, something equally meaningful happened. Mercedes, the bride whose wedding had brought me there thirty years earlier, was sitting in the audience.
Once again, I found myself acknowledging someone whose influence I’d never fully appreciated. “If it hadn’t been for Mercedes’ wedding,” I told the audience, “I probably wouldn’t be here with you tonight.”
Mercedes unexpectedly became the star of the evening. After the concert, people lined up to take pictures with her and even asked her to sign albums. She was visiting her family in Spain - today she lives in Chicago with Jeff, and teaches high school Spanish in Winnetka.
Later that night we sat together in Córdoba’s central square talking about Señor Zintel and how much a great teacher can make a difference. She asked if I still remembered Lorca’s poem about Córdoba. I recited it from memory.
“You know that because Zintel taught it to you,” she said. She’s right.
I’m still standing on the train platform in Córdoba. The announcement says the train is delayed another twenty minutes. I’m happy to wait a little longer. Because although I didn’t know all the roads, I did arrive in Córdoba (thanks to a great teacher and some unintended consequences). And who knows when I’ll be back.
Here’s to the happy couple, Jeff and Mercedes.
Most of the shows I’ve played in Spain this month are part of the various summer festivals that are put on all over the country. Back home, in New York, it is also festival season.
While on the road I’ve still managed to file a few Art of the Story segments for WBGO. These short radio pieces air daily on 88.3 FM in the New York area and are always available online.
A few that stayed with me over the past couple of weeks:
When pianist Aaron Diehl took over as artistic director of the 92NY’s Jazz in July series, he inherited one of New York’s longest-running jazz traditions.
The festival was founded more than forty years ago by the endlessly versatile Dick Hyman, and for nearly two decades it was shaped by pianist Bill Charlap, a master of both the piano and of bringing musicians together in ways audiences might never have imagined.
Now it’s Diehl’s turn.
When I spoke to Patricia Nicholson Parker last week, she was sitting in a car outside the Abrons Arts Center, preparing for the 30th Vision Festival.
“It’s a lot of manual labor,” she told me.
Thirty years in, she was still loading in.
The Vision Festival has become one of New York’s most important homes for creative improvised music. Running a festival is a complicated business, but Patricia says the reason it exists is simple.
“There was nowhere in New York to get together and just play. There was nowhere to jam free jazz, creative improv. It didn’t exist. And there was hardly anywhere to play.”
Other recent Art of the Story segments made by my WBGO colleagues Dave Popkin, Doug Doyle and Willard Jenkins have explored the Saratoga Jazz Festival, The Brooklyn Guitar Festival, & The D.C. Jazz Festival.
July 12 — Café Central, Madrid
August 6 — Barbès, Brooklyn
August 16 — Dakota, Minneapolis (with Ben Sidran)
August 26–27 — North Street Cabaret, Madison (with Ben Sidran)
August 28–29 — Green Mill, Chicago (with Ben Sidran)
September 3 — Barbès, Brooklyn
October 23 —Bur Oak, Madison
October 24 — Taliesin, Spring Green
My monthlong European adventure ends at the Cafe Central Ateneo in Madrid on Sunday July 12 and I’ll be back in Brooklyn next week. It has been a beautiful ride.
Anyway, that’s the week.
Talk to you soon,
Leo
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