Manchester Jazz Festival & Instituto Cervantes

Instituto Cervantes Manchester and Manchester Jazz Festival gets together to bring some of the best Contemporary Spanish Jazz artists

ONCE again, Instituto Cervantes Manchester collaborates with Manchester Jazz Festival bringing the most outstanding Spanish artists to Manchester. Working together for the past few years, they have brought some of the biggest names of the Spanish Jazz scene to audiences here in Manchester.

This year, the flamenco and jazz bassist Carles Benavent will visit us as a duo with guitarist Jordi Bonell. Benavent is one of the most prestigious and awarded artists of flamenco and jazz worldwide, who has shared the stage with Chick Corea, Miles Davis and the late Paco de Lucía. Born in 1954 in Barcelona’s Poble-Sec, he formed his first band, Crack, when he was thirteen, a jazz-rock-blues group which grew into Maquina!, marking a milestone in the Spanish vanguard music scene of the age. During his entire career he has collaborated with the biggest names in flamenco and jazz, and was an important player in Paco de Lucía’s band for more than 20 years. Since then he had been known as “La Garza Flamenca” and his tours have reached across Europe, America and Japan. He has released several albums under different names and projects such as Jazzpaña, Benavent 3 tríos or Carles Benavent Quartet. He published his last album in 2011, called Un, dos tres…

Carles Benavent will be playing with guitarist Jordi Bonell at St Ann’s Church on the 22nd July at 13:00.

The second artist visiting us is pianist and singer Diego Amador. He is one of these artists whose background is non-academic, due to a strong musical tradition in his family; we could
say that he learnt playing music naturally as he was born in Seville in 1973 into a gypsy family steeped in flamenco tradition.

His first instrument was the guitar, although he started at the age of 11 performing extensively, playing the drums for the group Pata Negra. Many different instruments have started to interest him at those days, most importantly the keyboard, and thanks to that he had the opportunity to accompany many big flamenco names such as Remedios Amaya, Diego El Cigala and Tomatito.

However, Diego has entered the world of the piano through the world of jazz, a music which fascinated him in his childhood, and has made him open to share projects with the greats of this genre. He has collaborated and shared the stage with several international musicians such as Chick Corea, Birelli Lagreene, Luis Salinas, Jorge Pardo or Carles Benavent.

Diego Amador

As time went by, he became a multi-instrumentalist, and equally a composer, recording artist and producer. All the while, his career as a solo artist defines him, without a doubt, as a pianist and singer.

We will be able to enjoy his performance at Royal Northern College of Music on the 24th of July from 20:00 onwards.