Raul Midón
@ the Barbican
23 November 2007

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Biography

Raul Midón was born in Embudo, New Mexico, to an Argentinean father and an African-American mother. A passionate music lover for as long as he can remember, Midón started playing drums at age 4 before shifting his focus to the guitar. He turned down a scholarship in creative writing offered by the University of New Mexico after being selected by the University of Miami for its highly regarded jazz program. Staying in Miami after graduating, Midón became an in-demand backup singer, working primarily on Latin projects for artists like Julio Iglesias, Shakira and Alejandro Sanz, while moonlighting as a club performer, sprinkling the requisite cover songs with the original tunes he was starting to write. On the city's stages, Midón diligently honed his craft as a singer, writer and guitarist, developing a syncopated, flamenco- and jazz-infused approach to the steel-stringed acoustic.

In 2002, when Midón felt he was ready, he walked away from his lucrative profession in order to pursue a solo career in New York City. “I wanted to become an artist and do what I wanted to do instead of being someone else's hired gun,"” he explains. When Midón performed for the legendary producer/arranger Arif Mardin, fresh off the recording of Norah Jones breakthrough album, “Come Away With Me”, he offered the newcomer a deal on the spot. This would be the final signing of Mardin’s long career. Midón quickly formed a partnership with the highly skilled veteran and with Arif's multi-instrumentalist son Joe. Father and son co-produced Midón’s 2005 debut album “State of Mind”, which garnered critical accolades for its heady fusion of old-school soul, timeless pop, Latin, jazz and the singer/songwriter idiom.

“You have to think about your audience, and at the same time make music that’s interesting to you as an artist. If something you hate becomes successful, you still have to play it every night, and that's no way to live. Because my first record was successful enough to satisfy the label, and because of the quality of the people I’m working with, we made the second album exactly the way we wanted to make it, which is pretty extraordinary in this day and age. There was no interference, no ‘Where's the single?’ We didn't go through any of that.”

Midón’s sophomore, “a world within a world” was recorded after the death of the elder Mardin. Midón and Joe Mardin tightened the focus, with Joe laying down the grooves and playing additional instruments behind Midón’s vocals and guitar parts on the majority of the tracks. “A World Within a World" has achieved further critical acclaim and a wider audience.