The flamenco jazz of the Daniel García Trio honors the rich and boundless musical traditions of Spain ★★★★☆

Spanish jazz is on the rise, thanks to a lively scene in Madrid around the breeding ground of Café Berlín. And of course that Spanish jazz is connected to the infusion of flamenco. The pianist Daniel García digs up Via de la Plata in music history. He comes across the great guitarist Gerardo Núñez, and works his beautiful Calima into an exciting and jumpy jazz piece. And he thinks it’s famous La Leyenda del Tiempo of Camarón de la Isla, by having his piano dance elegantly around the melody of that piece with the clarinet of the Israeli Anat Cohen.

But García looks further back at Spanish music culture. In Silk Road Eastern and North African influences are honored, with the unmistakable trumpet of Ibrahim Maalouf. And in the title piece, García and Cohen perform an age-old dance from the Salamanca region, which is dragged back into jazz with the light-footed piano playing. Via de la Plata is a very detailed yet wonderfully liberal album, which justly pays tribute to Spain as the hub of many musical traditions.