The ‘Whispered Awakening’ of Tomas Rodriguez
Guitarist-Composer-Educator Tomas Rodriguez lived in Union County for the first eight years of his life. He recently went back to his Westfield hometown to film himself playing a song he wrote commemorating his New Jersey youth. “Melancolie” aches with the sadness he felt when his family moved away. The video he shot below is him in the exact room where he grew up. It’s one of eight tracks on his fourth album, the recently-released Whispered Awakening. The album blends influences from his Spanish ancestry with Afro-Peruvian, Cuban and West African musical traditions.
One critic, from Spain, wrote that his playing is “…cellular, at the level of nerve endings.” Another, from Great Britain, called it “a stunning display of his composition talent and performance panache,” while a third, in Mexico, said his sound “finds a way of moving that feels natural, almost as if the guitar were breathing on its own.” The New York Times called him “a guitarist whose influences span the Latin world…unique…highly recommended.” Rodriguez teaches an honors-level program in Brooklyn that dips into African, Latin, Flamenco, Jazz and Classical.