Great rehearsal and a name!

Faro had a fairly serious car accident tonight before rehearsal, but it didn’t stop us from getting more work done. (He’s fine, if a little sore.)

We’re getting ready to lay down more tracks, and his acoustic playing on the classical guitar has added yet another dimension to the collaboration. I’ve got a bunch of tracks sitting here on CD for me to work with as I start stepping up to the next challenge: writing new material just for the duo, instead of just setting my existing poems to music.

Speaking of the duo: we’ve decided on a fairly ambitious name for the collaboration: “Duende.” Those of you familiar with flamenco music will recognize the term as the name given to the indescribable essence of the best flamenco — a poor attempt would be to say that the music contains a passion and intensity informed by the knowledge that death is present, urging you to do your best work as it may be the last work you do. A better way to say it is to say that you know it when you hear it. Its closest analogue in English might be to say that a piece of music has “soul.” Lorca wrote an entire book on it, which I highly recommend.

We toyed with calling ourselves “Cante Jondo,” or “deep song” — also a flamenco term for the most profound forms of the music. We thought that implied both the nature of the bass and my baritone voice as well as our ambitions for the group. However, we settled on “Duende” as being more all encompassing — and, in the spirit of the word, being something daunting to live up to.

So — we are “Duende.”

Right now, we’ve got the following pieces settled and lined up — there are more in progress.

With bass: “Getting Ahead,” the “Jim’s Fall” suite, “Snakes on a Plane”

With guitar: “I Need A Guitar Right Now (Or Something Like It),” “Where Do You Live?,” “Revisiting Roses and Violets,” and “Julie.”

I know a lot of the old-timers here will recognize those pieces. We hope to have a couple of them recorded soon and on Myspace.

I throw all this out there because we’ll be performing Monday night in Westfield, MA as one of the features at the Community Voices reading’s fifth anniversary party, at Jester’s Cafe. It’ll be our first performance under the name of “Duende” and the first one where we bring the guitar into the mix. We’ll be doing “Jim’s Fall” and one or two others, time permitting.

Please come. We’ll have the CD and chapbook of “Jim’s Fall” available for sale, of course; Faro will have his CD “Leap…and the net will appear,” and we hope to make it all worth your while. Also featuring will be Victoria Munoz and Bob Hoeppner, two outstanding poets worth making the trip for at any rate; and there’ll be the usual open mike, all hosted by the personable and talented Dave Keali’i.

Again — this is the most exciting work I’ve done in a while. I’m thrilled to be a part of this, and to work with such a talented musician.

Yay!