Ottmar Liebert

About

In its twelve selections arranged for guitar and orchestra by Oscar Castro-Neves, leaning into the night / inclinado en la noche features guitar arrangements of six well-known classical pieces (including Puccini's "O Mio Babbino Caro" and Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte"), as well as five of Liebert's own compositions and one by Castro-Neves. The classical pieces are interwoven with those by Liebert and Castro-Neves, who coproduced the recording with Stefan Liebert. The recording debuted at no. 1 on Billboard's Classical Crossover chart and remained on the chart for several months thereafter.

Born in Cologne to a Chinese-German father and Hungarian mother, Liebert began playing guitar at age eleven. Following the completion of a course of study in classical guitar, the eighteen-year-old musician embarked on a series of journeys through Russia and Asia. He traveled widely and studied traditional music but found little outlet for these crucial experiences in the Western pop music of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

First in Germany and then in Boston, Liebert put his guitar skills to work in a series of jazz-funk bands, the last of which broke up in 1985.

Frustrated and disillusioned with the East Coast music business, Liebert headed west.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, Liebert found himself captivated by the city's laid-back artistic ambiance and freed from the need to "make it" in the music business. He began playing his own music for his own pleasure and later for increasingly receptive audiences in local restaurants. By 1988 the first incarnation of his new band, Luna Negra, had been born.

The CD that eventually became Ottmar Liebert's debut album, Nouveau Flamenco, began its life as a self-produced local release titled Marita: Shadows and Storms. Santa Fe artist Frank Howell had arranged for the pressing of one thousand copies of Marita to be distributed along with his drawings. When copies of the disc found their way to a number of radio stations, programmers began adding tracks to their playlists. Marita was remastered and released nationally under the title Nouveau Flamenco. By 1993 the album had been certified gold in the United States; by 1997 it was platinum in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Two subsequent releases -- Poets & Angels (1990) and the Grammy-nominated Borrasca (1991) -- followed Nouveau Flamenco to no. 1 on the Billboard New Age charts.

Solo Para Tí, the 1992 Sony Music Epic label debut by Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra, featured Carlos Santana's trademark guitar on two tracks, including the Santana classic "Samba Pa Ti." The album not only went to the top of the New Age chart, it cracked the Billboard Top 100 Pop albums, garnered Liebert a second year of acclamation as Billboard's new age artist of the year, and was certified gold in the United States and Canada in 1995. Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra reached thousands of new fans in 1992 as the opening act on Natalie Cole's Unforgettable U.S. tour and through a pair of performances on Jay Leno's Tonight Show.

In 1993 a new Epic album, The Hours Between Night & Day, consolidated Liebert's position as an avatar of global music. The acoustic guitar master now thickened his sonic weave with electric guitar riffs in pursuit of what he characterized as "real acoustic and electric musicianship with some programmed computer-aided music design." Among the album's high points were a mind-opening rediscovery of the Fleetwood Mac/Peter Green classic "Albatross" and the transmogrification of the Marvin Gaye soul standard "Mercy, Mercy Me" into the Spanish "Ten Piedad de Mi" with the addition of José "Grillo" Blanco's lead vocals. The Hours Between Night & Day went gold in Canada and New Zealand in 1996.

In February 1995 Epic released Euphoria, a remix collection inspired by Luna Negra's 1993-94 tours of Europe and South America. Liebert gave "complete freedom to add and subtract and reconstruct our songs" to such master mixers as Steve Hillage, Aki Nawaz, and DJ Slip (of Compton's Most Wanted fame). Responding to years of fans' requests, Liebert released ¡Viva! -- the first concert album of his career -- in June 1995. ¡Viva! was, as Liebert promised, "a true live album -- no edits, no overdubs, no fixes" -- and it captured all the energy and emotion of a classic Luna Negra performance.

Ottmar Liebert Newsletter