Second Cup Café: Ottmar Liebert

Nouveau Flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert is the latest artist to perform on The Saturday Early Show's Second Cup Café.

He performed selections from his new album "The Santa Fe Sessions," that features some of his greatest hits, plus a couple of new compositions.

The pop-jazz guitarist's groundbreaking style has led to multi-platinum and Grammy-nominated albums, as well as sold-out world tours, making him one of the most successful instrumentalists of the past decade.

Born in Cologne, Germany to a Chinese-German father and a Hungarian mother, Leibert began playing guitar at the age of 11. Liebert says as a youngster he traveled through Russia and Asia, intent on fully absorbing each musical tradition he encountered. After dabbling in rock 'n' roll in his native Germany and then in Boston, he left for the West Coast and settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Liebert founded his band, Luna Negra, in 1988. They produced a record, "Marita: Shadows and Storms," that eventually found its way to radio stations. Soon, Higher Octave Music picked up the album and released a fully re-mastered version. In a short time, Liebert and his band were playing Nouveau Flamenco to thousands of fans and even opened for Miles Davis.

Some of Liebert's other critically acclaimed albums include "Euphoria" (1995), the live album "Viva!" (1995), the double CD "Opium" (1996), "Leaning into the Night" (1997), "Little Wing" (2001) and "Arms of Love" (2002).

Leibert says that in the future he is committed to creating more recordings featuring DJ mixes of his songs, and incorporating world beat, dance rhythms, synthesizer and ambient sounds.