tue 19/03/2024

flamenco

First Person: Ten Years On - Flamenco guitarist Paco Peña pays tribute to his friend, the late, great Paco de Lucía

There are moments that forever remain imprinted in our consciousness, engraved on the general map of our lives. I cannot forget the excitement of seeing snow for the first time in Córdoba, aged three or four, rushing to walk on it only to slip...

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Sánchez, National Symphony Orchestra, Martín, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - Spanish panache

Ravel’s Boléro, however well you think you know it, usually wows in concert with its disconcerting mix of sensuality, fun and violence. Context can make it even more powerful: in this case as the culmination of NSO Chief Conductor Jaime Martín’s...

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Album: Kali Uchis - Orquídeas

Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis hasn’t made large waves this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is because her appeal has partly been rooted in Latin communities across the US and, indeed, Central and South America. Last year her third album,...

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Ainadamar, Welsh National Opera review - hits hard without breaking ground

I find it hard to know quite what to make of Ainadamar, Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s one-act opera about the life and death of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered in unknown circumstances – probably by Nationalist...

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Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, Sadler's Wells - a roaring start to the Flamenco Festival

When flamenco first came out of the shadows and started to fill big theatres, it was like something out of a historical pageant. The shows that played London in the early 1990s harked back to an imagined gypsy past where old men hammered rhythms on...

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Oslo World review - a dizzying selection of high-tech, grassroots global brilliance

The Oslo World organisers are at pains to point out that, despite the name, they are not a “world music” festival. And with good reason, really. There may have been a few familiar WOMAD veterans headlining over the week-long event – Senegal’s...

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The Car Man, Royal Albert Hall review - grand scale drama and decadence

Ever since his re-staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne has managed to update the art of storytelling through dance steps and gesture in a way that others have struggled to achieve.This new re-working of his 2000 dance-noir, The Car Man...

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CD: Simon Thacker's Ritmata - Tàradh

Composer, classical guitarist and ensemble leader Simon Thacker has spent the past decade immersed in distinct musical cultures; from the reinterpretations and reimaginings of the musical traditions of eastern Europe and the Roma people that...

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Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, Sadler's Wells review - storming opening to flamenco festival

Crowned queen of the percussive heel and the trouser suit, Sara Baras has the audience on its feet long before the final number of her show Sombras (Shadows). The Spanish superstar is a familiar presence at Sadler’s Wells, having fronted its annual...

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BBCSO, Pons, Barbican review - love hurts in vivid Spanish double bill

This was an evening of Iberian highways re-travelled, but with a difference. At the beginning of 2016, the centenary of Spanish master Enrique Granados's untimely death, two young pianists at the National Gallery shared the two piano suites that...

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m¡longa, Brighton Festival review - sensual tango explosion

Watching tango dancers Gisela Galeassi and Nikito Cornejo own the apron of the stage during the second half of m¡longa, the brain finds it difficult to process what the eyes are seeing. The pair seem to be one writhing, dark-toned dervish of jutting...

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FLA.CO.MEN, Israel Galván, Sadler's Wells

Before this Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival-opening performance of Israel Galván's show FLA.CO.MEN, my guest wanted to know what the show would be like. And if I struggled lamely for words in response, it wasn't because I thought it would be...

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