Passionate Passages

It’s hard to imagine a world-music practitioner better suited to his job than Ottmar Liebert. The “nouveau flamenco” guitar player was born and raised in Germany by a Hungarian mother and Chinese-German father. He lived for a time in Boston and since 1986 has made his home in Santa Fe, N.M.

It’s no surprise that the inspiration for Liebert’s new album, “Innamorare/Summer Flamenco,” came during the globe-hopping musician’s recent travels.

On a seven-week sojourn with family and friends two years ago to Tuscany, he became enchanted by the Italian region’s landscape, people, culture and food.

At the time, Liebert was eager to record the ebullience he was feeling. The only problem was that his accommodations were ill-suited for laying down any new tracks.

“The place we were renting was this romantic, beautiful house, and I was thinking about how cool it would be to record my next album right there,” said Liebert by phone from Sacramento, a stopover on a tour that includes three Southland dates, including shows Thursday in San Juan Capistrano and Friday in Santa Ana. “But this place was a few hundred years old, not real sturdy and the electricity wasn’t very reliable. So we soaked up as much of Italy as we could before leaving.”

The first thing Liebert did upon coming home was to find an album title.

“I was looking for something to describe this summery, upbeat feeling I had over there,” he said. “I was flipping through the ‘I’s’ in the Webster’s American dictionary when I noticed the word ‘inamorata.’ It’s derived from the word innamorare, which means ‘to inflame with love.’ I thought it was a perfect choice.”

“It turned out to be more than a snapshot of our trip, [becoming] kind of a Tuscany-meets-Santa Fe album,” he said, pointing to such song titles as “Borboletta (Wings of Moonlight),” “Bella (Saturday Morning in Forte dei Marmi),” “Nightflower (Red Moon over Santa Fe)” and “Alameda (Music for Low-Riders).”

“Innamorare/Summer Flamenco” offers both a return to his roots and a further departure for Liebert, whose previous release was the classically steeped “Inclinado en La Noche (Leaning into the Night).” While his guitar playing echoes the acoustic stylings heard on his gold-selling 1990 debut, “Nouveau Flamenco,” the overall mix here is fuller-sounding.

While Liebert went after an eclectic stew, he was just as interested in keeping things as organic as possible.

“In the past, I’ve experimented with samplers, sequencers and synthesizers . . . and I’ve played electric and midi-guitars,” he said. “I just wanted to get back to the basics of playing the acoustic guitar without a lot of emphasis on production. I think there’s both an immediacy and intimacy to this recording that I was missing.”

“Innamorare/Summer Flamenco” finds Caribbean-, blues- and jazz-tinged numbers co-mingling with percolating mariachi rhythms and breezy guitar solos.

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His nine-piece band, Luna Negra XL, brought in several instruments that had never been used on a Liebert album, including a full drum kit, slide guitar, muted trumpet and the Peruvian cajon, described by Liebert as “a hollow, box-shaped instrument that snaps like a snare.”

So far, according to Liebert, concertgoers are responding with enthusiasm to his wide-ranging set list.

“It’s been fun rearranging a lot of the older material,” said Liebert. “I think because of the bounce provided by our horn and percussion sections, more fans are dancing than ever before. Although, for one of the encores, we slow it down for a selection using just the cajon and two acoustic guitars. I’m very pleased that that one’s been getting a big reception.”

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Liebert said he continually aims to expand the expressive possibilities within his instrumental-only framework.

“I never formally studied music,” he said. “I went to art school in Cologne [Germany], so for me, I see a tape machine as a canvas going by at 30 inches per second. First, I create a landscape and then add the melody, which I believe is the great seducer that leads listeners into the piece.

“Because there are no words with instrumental music, it requires a much more active listening approach. Still, it’s up to me to draw the listener in, which I try to also accomplish by building drama and tension within each piece. Otherwise, it’s just background music.”

And what makes his style of flamenco different from the traditional brand?

“In traditional flamenco, the rhythm guitar accompanies the melody or dancer or singer,” he said. “The way I use the instrument is much more as a lead--and groove-oriented--instrument.

“I think that stems from seeing Earth, Wind & Fire open for Carlos Santana when I was 15,” he said. “It was my first concert, and they had such a great, funky groove going. It just knocked me out. . . . It’s stayed with me all these years.”

* Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra XL play Thursday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $36.50-$38.50 (949) 496-8930. Also Friday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 7 and 9:30 p.m. $35-$37. (714) 957-0600; and Saturday at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 7:30 and 11 p.m. $20 (323) 848-5100.