PHOTO BY GLENDA BOOTH
Ricardo Marlow and Jose Oretea perform at Cedar Knoll Restaurant, 9030 Lucia Lane.
When Ricardo Marlow’s flamenco music fills the evening air, diners’ minds and spirits drift off to Spain from Cedar Knoll Restaurant’s outdoor patio under the pergola. Marlow, a professional flamenco guitarist and singer, performs at the restaurant several times a week, both solo and with other artists.
A Washington, D.C., native, he says that in growing up with parents who were classical guitarists, “Spanish guitars were always lying around the house.” His father, John E. Marlow, studied with renowned classical guitarist Andres Segovia in Spain. When Ricardo heard Spanish guitar music, “the flamenco genre really resonated,” he said in a recent interview. Marlow usually plays a musical style called rumba at Cedar Knoll.
At the restaurant, Marlow is joined at times by Yiyi, who has roots in Seville and plays a cajon, a wooden box with two to three guitar strings inside, designed to rattle like a snare drum. Another rumba performer, Jose Oretea, also sings and plays alongside Marlow some evenings.
Groveton resident Laura Jernigan goes to the restaurant several times a month. “I go because it’s perfection,” she says, “sitting at bucolic Cedar Knoll overlooking the sunsets on the Potomac River and listening to live, world-class flamenco music. There’s no other place like it.” And she adds, “their Spanish wine is delicious and so is the food.”
Marlow was born in 1975, grew up in Washington, D.C., and studied music industry merchandising at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. After graduating in 1997, he returned to Washington and accompanied flamenco dancers. He studied with American University flamenco guitar teacher Sophocles Papas, and since 1999 has gone to Spain annually (except for 2020) where he studied with Gerardo Nuñez. He is married to a flamenco dancer and has three children ages 8 to 18, who so far, are not performing flamenco.
Noting that he also has “learned on the job,” he plays flamenco guitar and sings all over the Washington area. For 16 years, he performed at Alexandria’s former Las Tapas restaurant on King Street, what Marlow calls “a former flamenco hub.” The restaurant is now closed.
Among many venues, he has played at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Barclay Theatre in Irvine, California, and with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore in Rockville and at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.
His heroes are Gerardo Nuñez, his teacher, and the celebrated Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía who died in 2014.
Flamenco
Flamenco is a prominent Spanish music art form that traditionally involves guitar playing, singing and dancing. The music has roots in the Andalusian Roma area of southern Spain. The Andalusian capital, Seville, is considered to be the music’s natural capital.
Flamenco music has many song forms, and when performing, musicians choose a song form. For some flamenco songs, the lyrics are somber, about topics like death and despair. Others are lighter or gay, with themes, for example, of love and the countryside. Some are fast. Some are slow. Traditional flamenco performances involve a single guitarist and a dancer in traditional Spanish costume who uses intricate arm and body movements, hand claps, heel stamps and castanets. (Cedar Knoll does not feature dancers.)
The flamenco guitar has six strings like other guitars, but the strings’ spacing is wider than on other guitars so the artist can get his or her fingers in between them. The strumming, called rasgueado, is percussion-like and the instrument has a plastic-like guard on its surface to protect it from the strumming motions.
Alexandrian Louis Pecaro heard Marlow and Yiyi for the first time in mid-September on the restaurant’s patio. “They are incredibly skilled and also lively,” he offered. “They are just right for getting caught up in the warm Latin music.”
Cedar Knoll Restaurant first opened in 2015. It has four dining rooms, three indoor fireplaces and views of the Potomac River. It is located on the west side of the south portion of George Washington Memorial Parkway at its intersection with Lucia Lane, seven miles south of Alexandria. The restaurant’s original building was a log cabin from the early 1800s. The land was once part of River Farm, one of George Washington’s five farms.
The flamenco musicians perform several nights a week, now on the outdoor patio but in cooler weather, inside. Restaurant specials include Spanish wine dinners several times a month. The restaurant’s chefs are Andrew Holden and Charles Blevins.
