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Robert Michaels

Robert Michaels' unique nuevo flamenco approach bridges Afro-Cuban, Latin, jazz, rock, and classical styles. He won the esteem of critics worldwide for his recordings and performances. Paradiso, his 1996 self-released debut album, was certified gold and platinum, but it was 2003's Allegro that actually took home a Juno for Instrumental Album of the Year. His eponymous, double-length fifth album was certified platinum and received three nominations. 2009's widely celebrated Cubamenco offered a seamless meld of Spanish romantic melodies, danceable rhythms, and Cuban styles delivered by his sensual, intuitive guitar playing and composing. He created, in effect, a new sound that's almost inseparable from historic traditions. 2013's Via Italia traced his lineage back to his mother's village in Arpino albeit in a modern realization of tradition through modern compositions, arrangements, and covers. In 2019 he applied his world music approach to his Holiday Classics collection. Though Michaels was born in Toronto, he is a first-generation North American. His parents emigrated from Italy. His given name was Roberto Michele Buttarazzi. Michaels and he was raised on a varied musical diet that registered delight and influence from guitarists including Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, and Wes Montgomery. At 14, Michaels borrowed a friend's guitar, bought an instruction book, and taught himself to play. Thoroughly under the guitar's spell, he absorbed and learned to play everything from flamenco, rock, and classical to tango, jazz, descargas, and so on -- virtually anything he encountered and liked. Surprisingly self-directed and intensely focused, he made his own way to a music career. Without the benefit of a label, Michaels completed and self-released Paradiso, his 1996 debut album. First it won gold certification, then platinum. He followed it a year later with Arizona. The sophomore album earned a nomination for a coveted Juno Award for Best Instrumental Artist of the Year. Though he played shows almost constantly, he was restless to record again. The glowing reviews of his first two popular albums resulted in a recording contract with Warner Music Canada, for whom he cut his third album Utopia in 1998. The ten-song set was a dazzling collection of nuevo flamenco adorned in complex, richly imagined rhythms and harmonies. Michaels followed it with tours of North America, Europe, and Asia. He also spent time in Cuba soaking up the music and culture and playing with local musicians including Compay Segundo. Released in 2003, Allegro offered the evidence. Alongside originals that embraced Afro-Cuban jazz and son including "Charanga," "Cubano," and "Armando's Market," he recorded striking arrangements of Mason Williams' "Classical Gas," Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," and the Doors' "Riders on the Storm." The album took home the Juno award for Instrumental Album of the Year (though the Collins' cover featured vocals). He followed with an eponymous, best-selling double album that crisscrossed musical traditions from Spain to Rio, from Havana to San Juan to New York and Mexico City. It featured guest vocal performances from Jennifer Warnes and Luba and was nominated for three Junos. The Spanish Guitar Collection appeared in 2006. It won critical notice and airplay for its nuevo flamenco approach that refused new age production tropes. In 2009, following long tours that took him back to Havana, Michaels delivered the stellar Cubamenco, a provocative, dazzling, musically adventurous offering that took son, danzon, and bolero and wed it to flamenco, jazz, and classical crossover. The album is regarded by critics and fans as his most satisfying and far reaching. 2013's Via Italia offered a musical journey to his ancestral home. In covers and originals, it journeyed across the modes, rhythms, and romanticism in Italian folk and popular song from tarantellas and canzone Napoletana to instrumental versions of songs from the cantautori songwriter tradition. One of its highlights was a radically rearranged tarantella version of the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" sung in Italian. That same year, Michaels released Spanish Guitar Collection 2. In 2019, he released the widely acclaimed Holiday Classics album. Performed by a full band and strings, the set included jazz-inflected flamenco carols as well as a few Michaels-arranged medleys of standards such as "O Christmas Tree/Away in a Manger," "Carol of the Bells/Good King Wenceslas," and "Silent Night/Joy to the World/ Deck the Halls."
© Thom Jurek /TiVo
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45 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

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