OTTMAR LIEBERT & LUNA NEGRA

Although La Semana is the first Ottmar Liebert + Luna Negra album with all-new songs in five years, the multi-faceted, Grammy-nominated, platinum-selling guitarist has been his usual prolific self, writing, drawing, touring and exploring, his myriad experiences informing the 13 evocative instrumental compositions on La Semana.
Like his music, Liebert is respectful, creative and open-minded; a thoughtful artist who likes to begin albums with a concept and structure, even if it's an untraditional one. But he's also intuitive and open enough to let the music decide what it wants to become. Thus, the more than an hours worth of songs on La Semana began with a firm direction, though ultimately the record found a different path to completion. "I usually start with a title before I start an album," Liebert explains. "The title decides what the palette will be; what sounds I'm going to use. It's very important for me to set certain limits. Will it be a color album or black and white? To me, La Semana is a drawing. As such, musically the record is back to basics with the wooden box drum used in flamenco, the clapping, and the palmas. It's all one acoustic guitar, no electric, no lutes, no steel string guitars."
Conceptually, he says, "La Semana began with the idea of a diary, perhaps in a leather-bound package, and each song would be titled after a different day of the week. I was going to write a diary entry for each day/song." However, as a renowned instrumentalist, Liebert decided he didn't want too many words to potentially interfere with La Semana's pure musicality. So a few months before completion, the concept of La Semana shifted. "For me, the beautiful thing about instrumental music is it allows each person to have their own interpretation of what the music is about. The eyes rule over the ears; that's the way the human body works," he observes. "And if you're being told something, the music takes a second seat. In the end this idea seemed too confining; I want music to be free of that specific a context." So the diary concept segued into one of discovering a box of photos in your grandparents' attic, La Semana's songs invoking mental pictures and aural-inspired mental memories.