I fell in love with Spain the moment I first stepped into a tapas bar. As I sat at a packed counter in the middle of Barcelona, it was not long before I had a glass of wine and a delicious selection of Spain’s famous small plates in front of me. Although I spoke no Spanish and had not even spent a full day in the country yet, it was at that moment that I felt as if I understood something profound about Spain and its culture.
When the Canada Council for the Arts later awarded me the ca. 1769 cello attributed to Joannes Guillami of Barcelona from its Musical Instrument Bank, I knew that I had to a make a recording paying homage to the instrument’s Spanish origin. After toying with various unsatisfactory ideas, I finally put two and two together, realizing that I should combine my love of Spanish food and music to create my own musical rendition of a tapas party. Each of the short pieces on this album was chosen for its own unique flavour and will give you a musical taste of Spain’s incredibly diverse and rich culture. And just as Spanish food would be unthinkable without the tomatoes and potatoes of the New World, so too it felt like an album of Spanish music would be incomplete without a couple gems from Hispanic America.
The name of that tapas bar in Barcelona that started it all… it was Tapeo.
Cameron Crozman
Tandis que le pianiste virevolte avec poésie et tendresse, le violoncelliste nous raconte des histoires, tellement qu’il est possible d’imaginer l’univers de Cervantès. Dynamique dans son approche, ce tandem met en musique des couleurs, parfois songeuses avec ce je-ne-sais quoi de sensualité lumineuse.
— Christophe Rodriguez, Ludwig van Montréal
[Crozman] nous livre ici un récital plus que convaincant. La composition du programme (Cassado, Ravel, De Falla, Albeniz, Turina, Ginastera…) est parfaite, le tempérament de l’artiste réel, le son superbe et la conduite des phrases, sculpturale.
— Christophe Huss, Le Devoir