Tradicionàrius. Annual local folk festival. Well considered, with a strong emphasis on Catalan traditional music.

 

This is the tenth year of this festival focussing heavily on all things flamenco. De Cajón forms part of an association of flamenco festivals, along with the Festival of Jerez, the Malaga Festival and Flamenco Festival Caja Madrid.

 

A long-running festival which takes place in some of Barcelona's finest music venues, bringing some of the most famous exponents of guitar playing in the world to our doorstep. A welcome annual event. 2010 is the 21st edition.

 

The shrewdness of Gilles Peterson in discovering new stars of black music continues to give good results. If in the 1990s he brought such names as Jamiroquai to the international stage, it has been two years now since the intuition of English DJ and producer made the first album by José James possible, “The Dreamer”, a highly acclaimed work that went to number 21 in the list of the 50 best jazz albums compiled by the JazzTimes magazine. With such inspiration as John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and Marvin Gaye, the young vocalist from Minneapolis was presented as a baritone with a distinctive and unique voice that blurred the frontiers between funk, soul, jazz and hip hop, featuring unstoppable rhythmic games, a great ability to improvise and intelligent compositions. He is now presenting “BlackMagic”, an equally captivating work in which he has had the help of beat masters of the likes of Flying Lotus, DJ Moodyman and Dj Mitsu.

 

 

 

The always welcome presence of the great Brazilian celloist Antonio Meneses in the soloist part of the always attractive, elegant concert of Saint-Saëns is a guarantee of a memorable performance. It will also be he who leads the version of the lyrical, poetical Tchaikovsky, all amidst a programme with works to awaken our imagination. The references to a hero of Byron in the overture by Berlioz, the exoticism of the music inspiring Kodaly in the Dances of Galanta, the place where he spent his infancy, and a magical tale on which Stravinsky based one of his most famous works.