Guitarist brings Russian feeling to flamenco
Grisha Goryachev was 8 years old in 1986 when flamenco guitar giant Paco de Lucia performed in Russia for the first time. He attended the concert in his hometown of Leningrad, which reverted to its original name, St. Petersburg, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
That performance “absolutely blew my mind. This music spoke directly to my heart,” says Goryachev, a prodigy who learned classical guitar from his father, Dmitry, but was unfamiliar with flamenco until then. He taught himself to play it from method books and listening “all day long” to the few records he could get hold of by de Lucia and earlier masters like the Spanish Gitanos Ramón Montoya and Sabicas. “The music expressed how I felt inside, how I felt about the world, and it was played with such fire and virtuosity,” explains the guitarist, who plays with passion and finesse, delicacy and power.
As Omni Dynamite Guitar Series producer Richard Patterson puts it: “This guy is a monster player!”
Goryachev is scheduled to make his third Omni appearance March 24 in the Green Room of the San Francisco Veterans Building, sharing the bill with young Italian classical guitar virtuoso Andrea De Vitis. In addition to two Sabicas compositions and a piece by contemporary Spanish guitarist Gerardo Núñez, Goryachev plans to perform “Montiño” by de Lucia, a transformative figure in flamenco whose expansive musical range suggests to Goryachev an artist who’s “several different people all in one.”
Goryachev, who earned a master’s degree and doctorate at Boston’s New England Conservatory, is also indebted to de Lucia personally: When the Russian applied for his green card (permanent U.S. residency), de Lucia wrote a letter on his behalf, urging immigration officials to grant his application because he was indeed what the government calls an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability.”
(You’ve probably heard that phrase in connection with Melania Trump, who also got her green card under that classification, because of her exceptional modeling ability.)
Now a citizen, Goryachev — whose parents immigrated to America through the U.S. green card lottery that President
Trump threatened to kill — lives much of the time in San Jose with his girlfriend when not performing around the country, Europe or Japan.
What does he bring to the solo flamenco guitar tradition he’s credited with helping revive?
“Myself, I come from the Russian tradition,” he says modestly. “We’re very sentimental people. I play how I feel the music.”
At the New England Conservatory, he studied with celebrated guitarist Eliot Fisk, whom Omni presented in San Francisco last week. Goryachev says he was shy “and couldn’t fully express my emotions. I always played stone-faced. Eliot opened me up as an artist.”
For more information, go to www.omniconcerts.com.
Festivals aplenty
Tickets go on sale Friday, March 16, for SFJazz’s 36th San Francisco Jazz Festival, featuring, among others, such notables as pianist Ahmad Jamal, singer Irma Thomas, Brazil’s Sérgio Mendes, drummer Brian Blade’s Fellowship and guitarist Julian Lage’s trio, from June 5 to 17 at five Hayes Valley venues.
SFJazz’s Summer Sessions run July 12-Aug. 19 at the jazz center. Artists include mandolin master David Grisman, Cuban piano stars Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, cellist Zoë Keating, and the venerable bluesman Taj Mahal. Rich-voiced Gregory Porter is booked at Davies Hall Aug. 18, singing Nat Cole’s music with the Magik*Magik Orchestra directed by Vince Mendoza.
For more information, go to www.sfjazz.org.
Huichica
This year’s Huichica Music Festival — a “micro-festival” in the vineyards of Sonoma’s Gundlach Bundschu Winery pairing its wines, regional food and a mix of psychedelic surf rock, folk and indie artists — is scheduled to take place June 8-9. The lineup includes Wooden Shjips, Jonathan Richman, King Tuff, Fruit, White Fence, Cut Worms and Bitchin Bajas.
Huichica, by the way, was the Sonoma Valley Mexican rancho that Jacob Gundlach, a Bavarian who came here in search of gold, bought a parcel of in 1857.
For more information, go to www.huichica.com.
High on life
The Clean & Sober Music Fest, rescheduled for June 9-10 after the North Bay fires prompted its cancellation in October, will be hosted at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds. The event is being presented by producer Jeffery Trotter, who figured it was time for a festival for those “who want to go out and have fun without mind- or mood-altering substances.”
The lineup includes the Stefanie Keys Band, Kevin Griffin & Laughing Buddha, Lorin Rowan’s Deep Blue Jam, the Cole Tate Band, Clean Sweep and comedian Michael Pritchard.
For more information, go to www.csmusicfest.org.
“The music expressed how I felt inside, how I felt about the world, and it was played with such fire and virtuosity.” Grisha Goryachev, on why he embraced flamenco music