22 Apr GREAT TRIBUTE TO CANTAOR ENRIQUE MORENTE AT THE POP EYE AWARDS
Enrique Morente died on 13 December 2010 at the age of 67 in Madrid. The genius from Granada, "the last flamenco poet", left behind him a career full of triumphs and complaints. It seemed that such a great voice could never be extinguished, but it was. The organisation of the Pop Eye Awards and the Morente family have decided by mutual agreement to carry out a "heartfelt tribute" to the artist, ten years after his death. The tribute will take place during the fifteenth edition of the POP EYE Awards, which will be held in Plasencia on 20 and 21 November.
Thus, Enrique Morente's widow(Aurora Carbonell) and his children (Estrella, Soleá and Kiki) are preparing an "emotional tribute" which they will stage on the stage of the Teatro Alkázar in Plasencia for the public attending the awards gala on 21 November. A decade after Enrique's death, the first circle of the Morente family is made up of Aurora Carbonell, the mother, and the three children: Estrella, Soleá and José Enrique. Then there is a second circle in which there is no lack of relatives from the paternal and maternal branch, the Montoyitas, who accompany them on guitar, clapping or singing in their performances.
Enrique Morente's career "was marked by his artistic and social restlessness, always open to dialogue with other musical traditions and attentive to the introduction of the great poets of Spanish literature in the texts of his creations", says the organisation of the Pop Eye Awards. Of all the movement that could be called "new flamenco", Enrique Morente was the cantaor with the most coherent concepts when it came to pursuing the evolutionary task. This coherence led him, on more than one occasion, to take the risk of staging projects and shows in which his participation, far from being limited to singing, extended to the roles of producer, director and dramatic performer.
Thus, in the mid-1960s, Morente took part in the staging of La Celestina with the pianist Antonio Robledo. Shortly afterwards he created the ballet Obsesión, premiered by the National Ballet of Canada. Together with Antonio Robledo he also created Fantasía del cante jondo for flamenco voice and orchestraThe first performance was at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 1986, with the guitars of Juan Habichuela and Gerardo Núñez and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. In 1988 he premiered his audacious El loco romántico based on Don Quixote at the Granada Festival; and in 1990, at the Bienal del Flamenco in Seville, his Allegro Soleá. He composed the music for Martín Recuerda's work Las Arrecogías del Beaterio de Santa María Egipciaca.
He has worked with Miguel Narros in Oedipus Rex, and has composed, among others, the music for the film La Sabina by José Luis Borau. Equally significant is his Flamenco Mass. His personal version of Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York and songs by Leonard Cohen, as well as the encounter between flamenco music and the electric tension of the group Lagartija Nick (in which Jesús Arias would play a fundamental role; he was the originator of the record), with all the essence of jondura are together in the work of Omega.
Morente has performed at the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, the Olympia Theatre in Paris, the Lincoln Center in New York, the International Festival in Granada, the Roman Theatre in Mérida, the Palau de la Música Catalana, and has toured France, Holland, Germany, Japan, the United States, Latin America and Russia, among others.
In 1994 he received the Premio Nacional de Música, which was awarded for the first time to a flamenco artist, in 1998 he received the Galardón de Honor de los Premios de la Música and in 1999 he was awarded the Galardón Flamenco Calle de Alcalá, which is given annually by the Festival Flamenco Caja Madrid to a flamenco artist who has spent most of his career in Madrid. He was also awarded the Bienal de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía Prize and the Extremadura Creation Prize.