Menflaco - Dan Ben Lior Quinteto, Castillo La Iruela, Cazorla

After having participated in a Sustainable Development conference in the Alpujarra, we were contacted by another conference.  It was for renewable energy and it was taking place in Cazorla.  A small city north of Granada that is right on the border of one of the largest protected natural area in Europe, la sierra de Cazorla.  This is an outlandishly beautiful area where I have thought of recording there many times.

We were asked to present and record a concert fully with solar power to demonstrate to the atendees of the renewable energy conference other ways of thinking with the uses of energy.

The location of the concert/recording needed to be someplace near the town so the atendees could get there easily, so they chose an amphitheather beneath a Moorish castle in ruins.  When put with the task of finding the musicians to bring up I immediately thought of the local guitarist here in Granada, Dan Ben Lior.  Luckily he was available and put together his flamenco jazz group, Menflaco, for the ocassion.

Before we had gone up there I had seen pictures of the place we were going to be setting up in, but it wasnt until we got there that we saw what a privilege it was going to be to record there.  It was an perfectly maintained stone amphitheater carved into the cliff face beneather a towering Moorish castle in a state of beautiful historic decay.  Besides all this, the Acoustics were Amazing!!

Being a circular performance space facing a rock cliff wall, the center of the circle had been made so it sounded like you were in sound chamber.  Brilliant.

Now, it was great that the excitement to record there was flowing hard because setting up there was a really tough work out.  Besides the recording, we had been asked to set up the entire sound system, amps, speakers, etc.  So we pulled out all the gear and for the first time displayed the full gala Wapapura set up in an awe inspiring location.

It was quite a night.  After the official show, the local mayor let us stay on until deep into the night because the musicians just kept at it until I told them that the solar battery was done doing its work and the sun had gone away ages ago...