How beautiful, someone in the hall of the BIMhuis sighs out loud in Spanish. The due, call it the Spanish flamenco spell, is loose. Los Aurora, an eye-catching young flamenco jazz band from Barcelona, is giving a concert in Amsterdam for the first time. The opening ‘La Aurora’ is immediately full of tension. The footwork of flamenco dancer José Manuel Álvarez: passionate and controlled. Singer Pere Martínez, just barefoot, his voice in groaning waves.
Los Aurora, four former students of the Catalan music academy Taller de Músics, supplemented this last week of the Flamenco Biennale Netherlands with dancer José Manuel Álvarez, break open the old flamenco tradition. This is done with bass-driven, contemporary fusion jazz in which borrowed elements – from prog rock, in this case – are given a logical place.
The basis is the work of the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, but the poetry of Federico García Lorca is also featured in the songs. Like the poem La Aurora, from the fairly new album La Balsa de la Medusa.
The attractiveness of Los Aurora lies in several elements. Martínez’s ecstatic vocals contain both melancholy and wry beauty. Those vocals are played around in usually firm, but delicately woven grooves by the band (pianist Max Villavecchia, bass guitarist Javi Garrabella and drummer Joan Carles Marí). After which dancer Álvarez runs off with everything. First there are quick, sticky hand claps. Then more and more fierce armwork. In an inimitable rhythm, his microphone-reinforced heels create an almost balletic dance all over the stage, under many jaleo – encouragement. His star is so rising that he will unfortunately leave the band.
No guitar
The approach of the eager Los Aurora feels contemporary. In drama, most of the traditional flamenco elements are present, but there is no guitar, for example. Their jazz is smooth but not necessarily deep – harmonic developments provide a revival. And then the show element is that all-enhancing sensual dance. You can also imagine this band at pop festivals: the band played in 2021 on the online edition of the Groningen Eurosonic.
The excited ‘La Flor del Oro’ is one of the highlights: the expressive vocals that convey the drama with a lot of vibration, the driving bass line, the pianist’s hands jumping over the keys, the tightly timed pirouettes with firm feet improvisation. But ‘Yo He Visto Mi Alma’ also captures the atmosphere of a life song, a bit sinister due to the low piano notes, the palmas claras (loud clear handclaps) and then big dance steps full of elegance, the jacket open and closed. If dancer Álvarez snaps the fingers, then it is one snap that you haven’t heard before.
Also beautiful are the velvet-covered lines that guest trumpeter Antonio Moreno Glazkov blows with a mixture of Lorca poetry and Chopin. And the retreat is dynamic in style: the dancer gets his rhythmically flapping band behind him in a string. It doesn’t matter much if the public would follow.