Feb
21
Spanish gaita (bagpipes) player Carlos Núñez is inviting Scottish pipers to join him on stage during his concerts.
You can call it a bagpipe, but to Carlos Núñez and others from the northwest Spanish region of Galicia, it’s a gaita.
The gaita has been central to Galicia’s Celtic music for centuries. Núñez, the leading exponent of the gaita, also is a pioneer in fusing Galicia’s homegrown music with Celtic music of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany, as well as with other regional music.
His latest album, titled “Inter-Celtic,” reflects Celtic music’s multiple roots.
Carlos Núñez
WHEN AND WHERE: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth SW; 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27 in the Performance Hall at San Juan College, Farmington; and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28, Macey Center, New Mexico Tech, Socorro
HOW MUCH: The Albuquerque concert is $25 in advance at ampconcerts.org or 724-4771. The Farmington concert is $18 general public, $15 students, $12 seniors, $10 for those 12 and under at the Performance Hall box office, or at the door. For the Socorro concert, visit nmtpas.org
“I come from Galicia, which is maybe an unknown Celtic country. In the last 15 years, we are making a whole inter-connection of festivals and musicians so that today, to talk about Celtic music is to talk about so many countries,” Núñez said in a phone interview. “But there are also new countries joining. For example, countries like Brazil, which since the 1500s has had bagpipes, the Galician bagpipes through the Portuguese. It was the first instrument that came from Europe to Brazil.”
And, he said, recently rediscovered are pastoral pipes that were used in opera productions in London in the 1700s.
He envisions an ever-widening world of the bagpipes as part of what he calls “the Celtic music of the future. It has so many colors and is so very, very rich.”
Núñez’s touring band reflects his expanding view of the music. His brother, Xurxo Núñez, plays percussion; Canadian Stephanie Cadman plays fiddle, sings and is a step dancer; Pancho Alvarez sings and plays a medieval guitar with metal strings. Besides the gaita, Carlos Núñez will perform on recorders, wooden medieval and Celtic flutes and the ocarina.
Carlos Núñez said he was part of a recording made some months ago for the song “Reel of Arrivals,” which is part of the stage show “Heartbeat of Home,” from the producers of “Riverdance.”
“It’s about putting together Celtic music with Latin rhythms. It’s very hot, very passionate, very energetic music. So it’s exactly what I’ve been doing for 15 years, looking for these connections,” he said.
In every city he tours, he is inviting Scottish bagpipers to join him on stage. Contact him through his Facebook page.
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