These lines are written from Madrid, Spain, in our tenth day of quarantine (3/18/2020). Ten days ago the Pablo Martín Caminero Quintet was losing its concerts in Bremen (Sendesaal Bremen) and Hamburg (NDR), Germany, where Caminero was to present his new album, Bost.
Yesterday Martín confirmed to me that he had lost all gigs internationally and in Spain.
Double bassist, composer and producer, Caminero is a rara avis, with academic training in classical double bass at the Superior School of Music in Vienna). He has knowledge of diverse musical languages (flamenco, jazz, classical and baroque), which masterfully assembles for the sake of truthfulness and uniqueness in the composition work on his themes.
If you are curious about flamenco-jazz and want to examine it further, you really need to dive into Caminero’s work. Bost, which means five in the Basque language, is his fifth album, played in a quintet format, every one of the musicians being masters of their instruments. Purchase it at Caminero’s website.
When I started writing the first pieces of the JazzOnLockdown project (in Spanish at my blog MissingDuke.com), the number of musicians contacting me to share their canceled concerts was troubling. Today the musical suspension is absolute. Madrid’s formerly vibrant agora is today a ghost city fighting a complex fabric of individual and social challenges. Healthcare workers are our militia, and self-containment, our main responsibility.
The emotion, the humor, the vitality . . . everything that means music is there in Bost— and that’s exactly what we need at this very moment.
