Rodrigo y Gabriela

There aren't many acoustic flamenco guitar duos who met playing in a Mexican thrash metal band, but Rodrigo y Gabriela are no ordinary musicians. Frustrated by the limitations raised by the hard rock format of the band Tierra Acida, Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintera took off and went travelling. They wound up busking together in Dublin, Ireland, where they were spotted by singer-songwriter Damien Rice, who invited them to support him on a couple of gigs. They recorded original material for their 2001 debut album, Foc, in 2001 but after they started gaining a following, they re-recorded the album and issued it as Re-Foc (2002). Their staggering virtuosity, free-spirited versatility and infectiously ingenious guitar arrangements won them a devoted following and their self-titled 2006 album - produced by John Leckie and including inspired versions of Led Zeppelin's “Stairway To Heaven” and Metallica's “Orion” - went straight to Number 1 in Ireland, outselling Arctic Monkeys and Johnny Cash. With warm live performances and widely varying self-composed material, the duo quickly built a solid international following. In 2008, the duo released the inspirational Live In Japan album while their album 11.11 (2009) was Number 1 on the Billboard World Music charts for 10 weeks in a row. In 2012, they released the album Area 52, which found the duo backed by the C.U.B.A. orchestra. The duo’s next studio album, 9 Dead Alive, was released in 2014 and followed five years later by Mettavolution (2019), which won a Grammy Award in 2020 for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. In 2023, the duo released the album In Between Thoughts… A New World.