A Musical Leap from New York to the Desert of Spirituality of Arizona

During the summer gig, Los Ruimonte performed in live for the people of the experimental city of Arcosanti in Arizona. This city was a discover for the Spanish singer Ana María – “I have the impression to be in another planet” – while Alan had already been there in 1978 during the famous music festival – “we were lucky for our car didn’t burn that night when several cars were burned at the parking, in what it was known as “Car-B-Que”.

Designed by Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti is an experimental city which is continuously under construction and expanding following the principle of the Arcology, where the nature gives the hand to the ecology. In a natural location, its design resemble the sun and the clay ground of the Great Canyon of Arizona. Cities nowadays, full of cars, where the individuality and the consume prevailed, and pollution is produced, and where to access to any place the cars are indispensable, lead to resurge this movement of coexistence with the nature, around the 70’s. In August 2016, after more than 40 years of its birth, it continues being active and alive. In a spontaneous recital, during a hot summer night of Arcosanti, and with the background of the sky, the stars and a beautiful moon, the sweet voice of Ana María Ruimonte, rhythmically accompanied by the chords and low notes of the bass of Alan Lewine, the night was colorful of Sephardic music, boleros, and the famous Star Trek, which is so appropriate in the location of Arcosanti. Outdoors, under the dome of “The Vaults”, which was designed by the architect and built by collaborators and volunteers who believed in the idea and the project, a natural eco was originated and everything was evolved of magic and music – “Your voice echoed to the heavens this night” said Rob Jameson, the Technology Manager of Arcosanti. At the end of the night, a little scorpion, surely attracted by the music, was around, so the people of Arcosanti live together and peacefully with the invertebrates and arthropodes, animal species of the beautiful desert of Arizona.

Few days after that, in Tucson, Los Ruimonte performed in their recital “Sephardic Treasures” at the temple Emanu-El with the songs of oral tradition from women to women, and from generation to the next generation, that coming from the Spain of the 15th Century were collected by musicologist at North Africa at the beginning and middle 20th Century. Magical songs with an actual touch that like so much and attract to the listeners who like music and the stories of our ancestors.

And at the end of the gig, outdoors, at Monterey Court, Los Ruimonte performed the recital “9 Centuries of Music in about One Night” and some of the originals of Alan Lewine, with Glen Ross, in the trumpet and saxophone. It was for them a tender reunion so they recorded on the KIMO Theater in Alburquerque in 1985, and some of this originals are remasterized in the CD “Sampler” of Owlsong Productions. Other musician were the drummer from Puerto Rico, living in Tucson, Eddie Rodríguez and Tonny Redhouse, Native North-American, in a very unique collaboration. Tony told us “I use instruments and melodies of the American indigenous, of my Navajos ancestors, to set together all the souls of this world, to give peace with the meditation and the music. Different than the actual tendency to separate us into societies, races, where the individuality prevails, I look for the opposite because I think that it is the sincere way to find the peace, the beauty and the happiness. I work with addicts to drugs, helping them to get over their addiction, and with ending sick people, special cancer patients, and I try to help them to calm their pains with the meditation and my music, the music of the desert of Arizona. So he showed with his flute and drums, with Alan Lewine. As Ana María said: – “this version of the song by García Lorca, “The Moorish girls from Jaén” has been sublime, beautiful. It has been magical and startling”. “We thank the Spanish Union of Artists and Interpreters, AIE, for their support in our gigs of recitals in live”.