Live music in Santander and Las Palmas, December 2018

Good old acquaintances and new discoveries during the last month of 2018...

• 5 December: Vinnie Sperrazza @ Rvbicón, Calle del Sol 4, Santander
  New York-based drummer Vinnie Sperrazza with Kike Arza (double bass) and Alejandro Mingot (guitar).
  

• 8 December: Retrópica by Mari Paula @ Café de Las Artes Teatro, Calle García Morato 4
  You may think that cooking and then eating tortilla de patatas while dancing is not such a good idea. I might have thought that too until I saw the Brazilian dancer Mari Paula doing exactly that, and more.

• 12 December: Juan de Diego Trio @ Rvbicón
  Juan de Diego (trumpet) returns to Rvbicón with his new trio featuring Alejandro Mingot (guitar) and Santi Colomer (drums).
  

• 14 December: Los Mambo Jambo @ El Centro Botín
  I can’t think of a better way of saying goodbye to Santander than spending my last night there listening and dancing to this band’s music. Los Mambo Jambo are Dani Nel·lo (saxophones), Dani Baraldés (guitar), Ivan Kovacevic (double bass) and Anton Jarl (drums).
  

• 21 December: Fiesta de Navidad @ Centro Cívico Suárez Naranjo, Calle Pamochamoso 34, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  After a ten-months break, I joined my friends from the African Percussion Workshop to play two songs to close the Christmas concert at the Centro Cívico Suárez Naranjo.
• 29 December: Link Floyd @ Centro Cultural CICCA, Alameda de Colon 1, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  In what appears to be a traditional pre-New Year concert, Link Floyd played entire Meddle plus a great selection of other tasties such as What Shall We Do Now?/Young Lust and High Hopes — all in all, more than two hours of pure Floydian pleasure. My only complain is that, as I already mentioned a year ago, CICCA is not as good sound-wise as Guiniguada, and this year’s concert has proved it once again. The line-up was Besay Brehcist (guitars, lap steel, vocals), Felipe García (bass), Miguel Izquierdo (keyboards, vocals), Fran Navarro (drums) and Kenneth Suárez (guitars, keyboards, harmonica, vocals), with José Pulido (cello) joining on the closing number, Comfortably Numb.
  

• 30 December: Gabriela Suárez trio @ Clipper La Puntilla, Calle Caleta
  In the last Isleta Sunset concert of 2018, young (really, really young) jazz singer Gabriela Suárez was accompanied by Jose Alberto Medina Quintana (piano) and Tana Santana (double bass).

Happy New Year!