Music / Paco Lara. At The Street Theatre, December 12. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD

PACO Lara is a flamenco guitarist from Andalusia in Southern Spain who has had a 30-year career playing flamenco music.

In recent years he has moved to Australia with Newcastle as his home. This was a one concert in a short tour to promote the release of a new CD “The Andalusian Guitar”.

Lara is not a flamenco purist, though he can certainly play in the “flamenco puro” style when he wants to. He has been part of the more adventurous Flamenco Fusion movement for the past couple of decades, which blends flamenco with other musical styles such as jazz and contemporary pop music. At its worst this can end up as elevator music, although when it works it can be magnificently entertaining.

This concert opened with a solo from Lara, an impressive demonstration of flamenco technique on guitar.

For the second piece, he was joined by second guitarist Carlito Akam and Byron Mark on percussion and piano as well as dancer Deya Miranda, still in a traditional mode.

This shifted for the next work, an arrangement of the well known “Concerto De Aranjuez” with an atmospheric synthesiser opening and then piano adding an unexpected tonal colour behind the guitars in the slow opening section before Mark shifted to percussion.

This combination set the style for the remainder of the concert. There was still loads of pure flamenco technique from Lara at the heart of the music but also a willingness to take the music in new directions.

Byron Mark added some sympathetic jazz inventiveness and never intruded while Carlito Akam provided a solid second guitar and a few dazzling solos as well.

Dancer Deya Miranda only contributed a couple of dances and these were presented with a focused passion without unnecessary theatrics. The audience would have enjoyed more from her.

A good flamenco singer would have made a wonderful addition to this performance, but sadly, such musicians are rare in this country. We can hopefully look forward to more performance from Paco Lara in the years to come.