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May
1999 It was in 1990 that Ottmar Liebert released his debut album, Nouveau Flamenco, and overnight turned the world flamenco-crazy. But Liebert's music was never the purest flamenco sound. He's brought in influences from the Middle East and Asia, R&B, jazz, and ambient music. With 1999's, Innamorare: Summer Flamenco, Liebert returns to the melodic flamenco sound that made Nouveau Flamenco a platinum-selling CD. In his Santa Fe, New Mexico, home, just a few days before a world tour, Liebert reflected on Innamorare. Amazon.com: With Innamorare, are you trying to make a more overtly emotional album than the ambient, trippier sound of Opium? Ottmar Liebert: Well, I don't think it's any more emotional than the others. I think all of the records have been dictated by my emotions. To me, Opium is a very emotional album, but it's a much more introspective album. It was simply where I was at the time: [it was] the end of a relationship, and my mother had died maybe six months before I started recording. It just made me go inward more, and I used a lot more samples and synthesizers. But I just didn't want to be around too many people. With this album, it's the total opposite. I was in Italy for a couple of months in the spring of 1997 and came back with the summer flamenco idea. I wanted to do something with a lot more energy. We put a band together that was nine pieces, with a horn section, three drummers, three guitar players, and bass, and we had such a good time with that, I basically took the same lineup and made the record with them. Amazon.com: So when you're depressed you use electronics and when you're not you don't? Liebert: No, it's not true. [laughs] It just was more associated with the inward thing--it was less people, therefore more electronics. And I think if I go in one direction on one album, I like to go in the opposite for the next. And especially since I felt really good about life, I thought it would be great to put out an album that was uplifting and happy. In a way, it's the first album since Nouveau Flamenco that's really like that. So it's been full circle in 10 years, and I hope it doesn't take me that long to be happy again. Amazon.com: And what is the cause of this happiness? Liebert: I think part of it was touring a little less and letting myself catch up with life. The other reason is just creating a little family for myself here. I'm with a lovely woman, and we've got a bunch of dogs, a bird, and a garden to take care of. It's just great to attend to that. Amazon.com: When did you get married? Liebert: I got married in 1997, in January. Amazon.com: I'm sure many people have commented that this album sounds like a return to Nouveau Flamenco. Liebert: Right. Well, it's amazing, because our engineer was remastering Nouveau Flamenco for our 10-year anniversary release that comes out April 1, 2000. The album sounds very different. I think it's just a certain feel that is similar. I'm actually quite enjoying that. Amazon.com: I heard a Miles Davis influence in a few places on Innamorare. Liebert: [Davis's] Sketches of Spain is one of the greatest records of all time. I've been looking for a place to do some muted trumpet, and Mike Middleton, whom I met for the tour in 1997, plays some wonderful muted-trumpet stuff. So I used that in a bunch of places. There's a particularly lovely sound, I think, on "Desert Elysium." The chorus melody is my flamenco guitar, Dobro slide guitar, and a muted trumpet all playing in unison, and I think it just sounds wonderful. Amazon.com: Do you think there was a segment of your audience that was missing the sound of Nouveau Flamenco and thought Opium and Euphoria were too far out? Liebert: I think it goes both ways. I know that I got some hate mail for Euphoria in which people said, "What absolute garbage this is. Why can't you do every record like Nouveau Flamenco?" But I also got e-mail from people who said, "I would have never found out about you if I hadn't heard Euphoria in a club somewhere." Amazon.com: On "Ballad 4 Santana," you really got into that old Santana sound, didn't you? Liebert: I got it pretty good, didn't I? It's that song form from the mid '70s, where you start really melodic, and then you have a couple of percussion breaks, and then you kick it in high gear. Sort of like "Samba Pa Ti" and "Europa" and all that stuff. It was kind of inspired by touring with Carlos [Santana] in the fall of 1996. It was a dream come true, because he had my whole band come up, and we'd play about four songs with him. So I just wanted to do a little tribute to him. Amazon.com: Your music has often been inspired by the places you've traveled, usually multiple places on any given album. This one seems inspired by Italy and somewhere closer to home. Liebert: Yes. To me, it's Italy and Santa Fe rolled together. My wife took all the pictures on the album. I took a few of the landscape things, but it's basically all places that we know in Santa Fe, and she was born and raised here, so she knows a lot of those places. It kind of gives it a feeling. You hear my take on the music and see where we live. There's also a big Italian influence. When we were in Italy in the spring of 1997, we had licensed a song of ours to an Italian movie called Il Ciclone. And when we got there, an Italian band had done a note-for-note cover of the song and just added a big beat to it. And that song went to No. 1 on the Italian radio charts. It was so cool to hear "2 the Night," an instrumental song, go off the chart like that. It wasn't our version, but it was note-for-note. And it was very inspiring--the whole atmosphere certainly added to it and is on Innamorare in musical form. |