Ximo Tebar

A debut that sounds nothing like a debut. Aranzazu was recorded over five days in Madrid in January 1988 and released two years later on the Valencian label Di-fusió Mediterrània. The album announces its intentions immediately: this is jazz guitar rooted in the melodic shapes and emotional directness of Mediterranean music, not in the American hard bop tradition or the cool school detachment that dominated European jazz guitar at the time.

Ricardo Belda's piano comping is sparse and harmonically rich, giving Tebar room to develop lines that curl and stretch in unexpected directions. Luis Llario and Jeff Jerolamon lock in behind him with a rhythmic patience that lets the music breathe. Five of the six compositions are Tebar’s own, and they have a singing quality that feels closer to Andalusian vocal tradition than to anything in the jazz guitar playbook.

Jorge Pardo's guest appearance on the second side adds a different kind of heat. Pardo was already a central figure in Spanish jazz through his work with Paco de Lucía, and his saxophone lines here interact with Tebar's guitar in a way that makes both players sharper. The album's title track is the highlight: a long, patient composition that builds its intensity through repetition and variation rather than through any sudden dramatic shift. For a first record, the confidence is remarkable.

The leap between Aranzazu and Anís del Gnomo is enormous. Where the debut was a focused quartet record with one guest, this is a sprawling, ambitious project that pulls in flamenco guitar, cante (flamenco singing), American hard bop saxophone, and the full spectrum of Tebar's own playing on both electric and classical guitar. The sessions took place in Valencia in January 1990, and you can hear the care taken with every texture.

Dave Schnitter, the American tenor saxophonist who had played with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, brings a hard bop fluency that sits in startling contrast to Ricardo Esteve's flamenco guitar and Juan Castro's vocal cante. The fact that it all holds together is a testament to Tebar's arranging instincts. He doesn't force these elements into artificial unity; instead he creates compositions where each tradition has room to speak on its own terms before the ensemble pulls them together.

Jorge Pardo returns on flute and soprano saxophone, and his presence here is less a guest spot than a full collaboration. His flute lines weave through the flamenco passages with the ease of someone who has spent years bridging these worlds. The album’s title, Anís del Gnomo, plays on Anís del Mono, the long established Spanish anise liqueur, and suggests something homegrown and convivial, and that is exactly the spirit of the music: warm, generous, slightly intoxicating, and deeply local even as it reaches outward.

Recorded live in the Soviet Union during the group’s tour of 1990 and 1991, this is the sound of the Ximo Tebar Group in full flight. The studio albums are carefully arranged, layered, considered. This one is none of those things, and it is magnificent for that reason. The quintet plays with an intensity and collective focus that the studio environment cannot quite replicate, and the audience energy is audible throughout.

The set list overlaps with the studio record Te Kiero con K, which shares "Leningrado", "Nana (Canción de Cuna)" and the title tune, and the arrangements here are opened up, stretched out, and given room to develop in ways the studio versions do not. Tebar's guitar playing is more extroverted here than on any of the studio dates. He takes longer solos, pushes harder into the upper register, and lets the rhythm section drive him to places he might not go in a controlled recording environment.

Felipe Cucciardi and Adolfo Crespo create a rhythmic foundation that is simultaneously tight and loose, the kind of feel that only comes from a band that has been touring together and knows exactly how far they can push each other. Nicolay Kuznichev's vocal appearance on the sixth track adds an unexpected local element. The recording quality is imperfect, the audience is audible, and none of that matters. This is the essential document of the early Ximo Tebar Group as a working band.

Te Kiero con K is the culmination of the early Ximo Tebar Group recordings, and it is the one where everything comes together. Recorded at Estudios Pertegas in Valencia in September 1991, it benefits from both the confidence the band gained on the road (documented on Live in Russia) and the expanded percussion palette that Rubem Dantas brings. Dantas, the Brazilian percussionist who had been central to Paco de Lucía's sextet, adds a rhythmic sophistication that transforms the group's sound.

The programme is Tebar’s strongest to date, seven group pieces closing with a solo guitar arrangement of Monk’s “Round’ About Midnight”. They move between straight-ahead jazz, flamenco-inflected passages, and something harder to categorize: a kind of Mediterranean groove music that owes as much to the rhythmic traditions of the Spanish coast as it does to anything in the jazz canon. Ricardo Belda's keyboard work is more adventurous here than on the earlier records, and Luis Llario's acoustic bass anchors everything with a deep, woody tone.

Jorge Pardo's flute appearances are deployed sparingly but with devastating effect. His lines float above the rhythm section with a lightness that contrasts beautifully with Tebar's more grounded guitar work. The title itself, a playful phonetic respelling of "te quiero" (I love you), captures the record's spirit: affectionate, slightly mischievous, and completely at home in its own skin. This is the record to start with if you are new to Ximo Tebar, and the one to return to when you want to hear a band at the peak of its early powers.