Ottmar Liebert : Leaning Into the Night

Ottmar Liebert

Ottmar Liebert has said that "flamenco is a music both romantic and dangerous; it is an attitude as much as it is a musical genre." Therein lies the philosophy that catapulted him to fame at the end of the 80's with an engaging mix of subdued flamenco guitar and South American percussion, rock, jazz, and pop influences. Liebert's "attitude" actually suppresses the more challenging and "dangerous" aspects of flamenco in favor of the romantic -- and the stylish. He's not a technical wizard on the guitar, but he has a feel for the music's innate sensuality and a gift for creating memorable melodies.

Liebert’s incredible global success on a musical level often seems like a simple outgrowth of his cultural background and powerful wanderlust in his formative years. Born in Cologne, Germany, to a Chinese-German father and a Hungarian mother, Liebert traveled throughout Russia and Asia before moving to Boston and eventually settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After years of trying to hit the big time in various jazz-funk bands, he began playing acoustic guitar in Santa Fe restaurants. His first (self-produced) cassette, Nouveau Flamenco, was basically recorded for friends, but the album received heavy radio airplay on WAVE in Los Angeles. Higher Octave Records re-released it nationally in 1990. After his subsequent album Borrasca quickly climbed the charts, Liebert was picked up by a major label, Epic. With his enigmatic stage presence, Liebert has brought flamenco to mainstream America with a certain level of class and accessibility. His prowess as a composer and instrumentalist has steadily improved over the years.

By 1989, he had founded the first incarnation of his new band Luna Negra. Nouveau Flamenco began life as a self-produced local release called Marita: Shadows and Storms, copies of which local Indian artist Frank Howell distributed in his art galleries. When the record found its way to radio stations and began generating a buzz among programmers and an unprecedented response among listeners, Higher Octave Music picked it up and released a fully remastered version.

“I was honestly happy playing this music in hotels and restaurants in Santa Fe, and going in one year from doing that to opening for Miles Davis was a pretty intense jump,” he recalls. “Most shocking for me was to realize how many different people from so many diverse cultures embraced it. I still get letters from fans in Europe, South-America, Australia, and Asia...it’s been a really gratifying experience. I’ve had the opportunity to play in a wide variety of cultural settings with musicians from around the world, and that has been a great experience, too.”

Ottmar Liebert

Liebert has since become one of the most successful instrumental artists of the past decade, thrilling audiences throughout the world and releasing a catalog of classic recordings, including the remix collection Euphoria (1995), the live album Viva! (1995), the double CD Opium (1996) and the classical-oriented orchestral album Leaning into the Night (1997). He wrapped up his decade with Epic with 2001’s Little Wing and went back to Higher Octave Music, releasing a lush album of lullabies called In the Arms of Love in 2002 and an album with Luna Negra XL called The Santa Fe Sessions (2003).

La Semana (2004) was the first all-new band album in five years, followed by Winter Rose (2005), which featured original pieces, classical music and Christmas songs. In 2006 Liebert's record label SSRI released One Guitar, his first solo guitar recording, which received Liebert's fourth nomination for a Grammy. His newest releases are Up Close (2008), which is a binaural dummy head surround sound recording, and The Scent of Light (2008) a labor of five years. Five time Grammy nominated guitarist Ottmar Liebert has release some of the most successful instrumental guitar albums ever, with more Gold and Platinum certifications than any other acoustic guitarist. (RIAA)