Flamenco strikes chord with Pascual
As one of only a handful of flamenco musicians in Boston, guitarist Juanito Pascual doesn’t worry about operating without the safety net of a large supporting community. Its nothing compared with the challenges he faced learning his craft as an 18-year-old living on his own in Madrid.
"I’d saved up money working in a grocery store back home and I thought I had enough for three or four months in Spain,” the Minneapolis native said of his post high school trip. "After four weeks there, I bought this gorgeous flamenco guitar and was completely broke.
"I had no real choice but to hit the streets of Madrid. I stared playing every day in the subway. I didn’t have a plan. I was staying in the cheapest possible place. There was no heat. Once it got cold, I could see my breath in the morning. When I was practicing it took me three hours to warm up. I had four to six dollars a day for food. I bought a hot plate, which saved my life, so I could cook lentils and rice. But I didn’t come to Spain to play on the subway.”
Pascual began augmenting his subway earnings accompanying dance classes at a local flamenco school.
"Then I mustered enough money to take guitar lessons as well. After a while, I’d check out the semblance of normal existence. "
The year in Spain led to Boston and a degree from New England conservatory in 1997, and much more.
Sunday night at Durrell hall in the Cambridge family YMCA, the 29-year-old guitarist celebrated the release of his debut CD, "Cosas en Comun” (Three Columns”), an album of originals that uses traditional flamenco rhythms as a springboard for improvisation and interplay with percussionist Gonzalo Grau and other quests.
On May 10, Pascual appears at the Lion of Judah Church in the South End: on May 29 and 30 he mixes it up with the Turkish harp player, jazz trombonist and Indian percussionist at the Tremont Theatre: and on Labor Day weekend he performs at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival.
"I did have the distinct feeling ever since I was 12 that I’d never have a day job,” Pascual said with a laugh. "But even though I’ve been gigging regularly since I was 14, I never even considered music as a profession.”
That changed dramatically after pascual settled in Boston in ’93. He was soon touring nationally with flamenco dance companies and working with Boston –based dance troupes led by Omayra Amaya and Ramon de los Reyes.
Earlier this year he took part in one of the lecture/demonstrations tied to the wildly popular Flamenco Festival, presented annually for several years by World Music. Down the line, Pascual hopes to perform with salsa and jazz musicians, write a flamenco guitar concerto and record a duet CD with Russian-born guitarist Grisha Goryachez.
"The work (in Boston) comes and goes, but groups do come through town, and since I know a lot of them, we hang out, "he said. "Here and there I get these infusions of flamenco pit stops, that keep me going.
More than that, pascual said, it’s the melodies, moods and rhythms of flamenco that keep him charged.
"I had a teacher once when I was young who was tuning somebody else’s guitar,” he recalled. "He strummed a sequence of chords that brought tears to my eyes. I realized later that it was a typical flamenco chord progression. There’s something about the sound that has always affected me very immediately and emotionally.
" Flamenco is an expression of self. And from the perspective of a guitarist, flamenco is like Mount Everest. It’s a challenge in every way."