Vida: Flamenco, Jazz, and Improvised Dialogue

Josemi Carmona, born in Madrid in 1971, emerged from a difficult quarantine period with a new artistic impulse. The emotional block he describes during the pandemic became the seed for a fresh album created with double bassist Javier Colina, originally from Pamplona born in 1961, and percussionist Bandolero, whose real name is José Manuel Ruiz and who hails from Madrid, born in 1976. Entitled Vida, Universal plans an end-of-April release. Carmona explains that the album is a direct result of what he felt during that challenging break: the record is, in his own words, Vida. The pandemic left him shaken in 2020, and what began as time to focus on work and writing evolved into a deeper realization about the need to tend to one’s inner world. He notes that the soul deserves attention just as much as the body, and that value lies in mood, feelings, hugs, and compassion. Hence the title, Vida.