Spanish bassist / composer Carles Benavent

From discogs:

Spanish bass player, born March 1, 1954 in Barcelona.

Benavent's greatest contribution to music is to have given a major role to bass guitar in flamenco music with the Paco De Lucia Sextet in the 1980's. He's played too with Miles Davis, Chick Corea and El Camarón De La Isla. At 13 he founded the blues trio Crac (2) with Salvador Font (drums) and Emili Baleriola (guitar). In 1969 the three of them joined Enric Herrera to refound Máquina. In 1975 he founded Música Urbana with Joan Albert Amargos (piano, clarinet), Salvador Font and Lluis Cabanach (guitar).He has also played with a lot of Spanish jazz-rock musicians, including Kitflus, Tito Duarte, and Jorge Pardo.

Based on these solo albums it's obvious he contributed quite a bit to the Musica Urbana group, which is btw my favourite progressive fusion group out of Spain.  The hallmark of his style is the shocking chord changes under elaborately florid flamenco-like melodies.  From the first ST album, the track called Full of Clarinets and Mandolins sounds the most like a MU composition:

From the Dos album, Romantica:

Notice that in the 1991 album he plays with keyboardist Amargos and violinist Didier Lockwood, who was featured here before I think to completion or almost.

If there's anyone who hasn't heard the 3 Musica Urbana albums, I strongly urge them to seek them out asap, and kick them in the butt too (to boot) for not having done so earlier.

Included are albums Carles Benavent, Dos Copas, Peaches with Salt, and the collaboration with Lockwood called Colors.

Review of another violinist: the great Didier Lockwood, with his relatively unknown album from 1978: Thank You Friends

We covered David Rose long ago, Zbiggy Seifert more recently, Zippy Reinhardt less recently, and here we are now with Lockwood.  There is also the slightly  lesser known French violinist Michel Ripoche who was covered extensively in the prognotfrog days of the paleozoic.

When I was desperate to hear Lockwood's New World again recently (to restore the masterpieces to my fixed ipod) I saw to my dismay there was an item in his oeuvre outstanding from 1978, namely this one he made in collaboration with the great Francois Cahen (who I just read passed away in 2011).  Everyone knows with whom he played, right?

Consider the dreamy atmospherics of Reves de Musique:





And then consider the fact that it's representative of the entirety of this wonderful LP filled with long and well-thought-out tracks and advanced composition.

For ages my favourite piece from Lockwood has been La manufacture du sucre englouti:





It's so beautiful it's like magic.  With (co-composer) Gordon Beck on piano, starting off by channeling Bill Evans obviously but moving on to create an amazing amalgam of classical Ravel and the tenderest jazz piano.  Those were the days, right?  (I'm not sure wherefrom the curious title derives, it means The manufacture of submerged sugar).

I didn't include the 1981 Fusion which is good but well-distributed online, but I did the next year's Fasten Seatbelts, which despite a couple of tracks is mostly disappointing.  Having said that, listen to his ingenious musical exploration of the largest blood vessel, the Aorta:





Btw reviewing Lockwood reminded me of the Catherine - Escoude - Lockwood trio album from here.  For those with better memories than myself, Didier also appeared (with Escoude) on the amazing String Summit record that featured Wolfgang Dauner.  And I should mention his brother the keyboardist Francis who also made some great fusion records back in the day, including Debbi.


So who's the best of the fusion violinists?  The overpopular Jean-Luc Ponty, David Rose, Reinhardt, Zbiggy Seifert, Michel Ripoche, or our current feature?  In all honesty the best single album is Seifert's Passion, but as a whole, Lockwood had the most amazing work, especially when you listen to Surya and the way it flows together so beautifully from start to finish.