Inspired by a seven-week vacation in Tuscany during the spring of 1997, German-born guitarist Ottmar Liebert's newest release, Innamorare/Summer Flamenco, finds him building upon the mood of his ground-breaking first album, Nouveau Flamenco. Harboring a fresh perspective, he heads a nine-piece band that includes a horn section, three drummers, three guitar players, and bass. Liebert began playing guitar at age 11, attended an arts high school, and completed studies in classical guitar by age 18. He traveled widely, absorbing the rich musical traditions of Russia and Asia.

When the last of the jazz-funk bands he performed with broke up in 1985 in Boston, Liebert left and settled in Santa Fe where he returned to playing nylon string guitar and founded his band, Luna Negra, in 1988.

His debut, released by Higher Octave in 1990, has become one of the best-selling guitar records. He went on to sign with Epic Records and has since released an album nearly every year.

You've often spoken about how your travels have influenced your music. How much does the environment of Santa Fe affect your music?

Ottmar Liebert: I think it has a lot to do with it. The first time I saw Santa Fe I had helped a friend drive his belongings back home to Santa Fe from the East Coast. My plans were to just stay for a couple weeks. But when I saw Sante Fe, especially the landscape surrounding it, I stayed.

I'd grown up in a city, always lived in a city, and to suddenly have that desert view, especially when you go on a mountaintop and can easily see 50 to 100 miles in the distance, it was shocking. After seven years in Boston trying to get a rock band together, playing in a lot of clubs, and making a couple of singles, I was sort of at the end of something, at a crossroad.

Santa Fe seemed wide open. It was taunting me the way a white canvas taunts a painter. I decided in a couple months to go back to playing nylon string guitar, which I'd abandoned 10 years before. I started playing in restaurants, and any place I could, here in Sante Fe and began taking Flamenco lessons to get more of the technique down.
"The purists are fat old people that have no clue. Music has to be liquified; it has to keep changing. The moment it stops changing, it's dead."

You've been criticized by purists for altering the Flamenco form.

The purists are fat old people that have no clue. Music has to be liquified; it has to keep changing. The moment it stops changing, it's dead.

But you're also coming from a jazz background in which the key is improvisation and bringing all of your experiences into a piece?

Exactly. And to me it would be completely dishonest to even pretend to play traditional gypsy music, because you have to grow up in that -- breathe the air, eat the food, drink the drink. For improvisation to be honest, you have to let everything that is going on in your head and heart come through.

Are you improvising a lot on your new album?

Oh hell, yeah. There are a few songs where I start with the melody, but usually I start with a certain feel, a certain rhythm, and then the harmonies. Then I will just pick some day that I'm feeling particularly good about the music, and I'll sit down and just play from beginning to end, and I'll make up the melody as I go.

Was it a conscious choice to return to your Flamenco roots with this album?

No. I'd gone and done a lot of electronic stuff on Opium. Instead of playing three of our different instruments, I wanted to go back to just playing Flamenco guitar. And instead of using keyboards, we went to some new sounds that we never used before.

The similarity with Nouveau Flamenco is in the overall mood rather than the sound. The nine-piece group was originally put together for a tour in the fall of '97 when I wanted to have a more high-energy group with a bigger sound. When it came time to record, I really liked the sound we were getting, and so I recorded that whole band. But to me, it's sort of like a rubber band: It gets bigger and smaller.

Are you in your own studio with this album?

Yeah. In the sense that live is just there for a moment, a studio recording is there for many years, and I sort of want to pare it down to what's essential because it will last a lot longer. It won't sound tired after six months or a year.

What do you feel is distinctive about your new album?