The Concert for García Lorca: Ben Sidran, 1998

The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was a 20th century Renaissance man, whose work also touched on the worlds of music, theater, and politics. Recorded live at the Granada house in which Lorca lived, and using the piano that he himself played, Ben Sidran marks the 100th anniversary of Garcia Lorca's birth with this superb recording.

Something of a Renaissance man himself, Sidran has always intertwined his passion for jazz with many forms, nurturing it not only as a musical tradition, but as an oral and written one as well. Here, Sidran blends his own compositions with the poet's writings, along the way featuring the richly-hued tenor saxophone of Bobby Martinez (who combines the deep glow of John Coltrane's ballad side with the hard grit of David Sanborn). "On Defeating Death" tells Lorca's poignant history, while "On Duende" references the poet's evocation of the "mysterious power that everyone senses, and no one explains."

Undergirding Sidran's incisive piano playing is the quiet intensity of Manuel Calleja on bass and Leo Sidran on drums. Several standards are also woven into the intoxicating mix, with "Lover Man" evoking the cosmopolitan days of Lorca in Manhattan, where he encountered the still-young fervor of American jazz. The quartet also transforms Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So" into an anthem of fallen faith, and performs - appropriately, given Lorca's political concerns - a fabulous version of Eddie Harris' "Freedom Jazz Dance."
from Larry Nai, JAZZIZ Magazine (2000)

Bass: Manuel Calleja
Drums: Leo Sidran
Piano, Vocals: Ben Sidran
Saxophone: Bobby Martínez
Recorded June 18th, 1998 at Huerta de San Vicente, Granada, Spain

A biography of Ben Sidran at All About Jazz:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=4310