Best of Esteban

With his latest release, Best of Esteban, one of the world's most prolific composers and guitarists of our time has not merely created a retrospective. Instead of a simple cut-and-paste collection, the man once known as Stephen Paul took a handful of concert favorites and returned to the studio to reinvent them. The result is a fiery, blues/rock/flamenco melding of the songs that have made him a beloved icon in classical and modern guitar playing.Trademark songs like Fuego Malague¤a - a reworking of Malague¤a from 2001's All My Love have, as the title denotes, been given extra fire, fusing more rock influence into his atmospheric flamenco-based performance. Runaway, Del Shannon's classic, is also seeing life in a completely new way. That song brings back a lot of memories for people who were around back then, Esteban says, seeing it as a bridge to younger audiences as well. Another song bringing back more recent memories is Mediterana, an Eastern-based song in which he plays sitar, backed by the Indian percussive tablas and dumbuk.