CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Estrella Morente

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Estrella Morente, Vocalist

Program Notes:

Jeff Tamarkin on
Estrella Morente

Flamenco, by its very nature, is an art fraught with passion and danger. It bursts with tension, sensuality, and intensity; insists on equal parts precision and emotion; and requires from its participants both a deep immersion in its ancient, Andalusian-originated traditions and a commitment to furthering its reach in the contemporary world. Comprising three intertwined components—dance, guitar, and voice—flamenco asks that its artists become inseparable from the art itself. Estrella Morente was born into it: the daughter of Enrique Morente, himself a flamenco visionary, and Aurora Carbonell, a dancer. By the age of four, Estrella was already singing flamenco cantes; by seven she was accompanying her father; at 20 she released her debut album, Mi cante y un poema (My Songs and a Poem). Critics immediately praised her as the new voice of flamenco. Hailed by All Music Guide, “Ms. Morente’s voice is full of adventurous twists and turns and sharp shifts in both tempo and color … [her] singing and her accompanists carry the listener into a realm of unexpected pleasure and stirring.” Her follow-up recordings, Calle del Aire and Mujeres, have continued to establish Morente as one of the great voices of modern flamenco—it was actually her fiery voice that filmgoers heard on the title track of Penelope Cruz’s 2006 film Volver. Now, for one night, as part of Carnegie Hall’s Around the Globe series, Estrella Morente—known within her family as “the Nightingale”—brings the heart of flamenco to the heart of New York City.


—Jeff Tamarkin is the Associate Editor of JazzTimes magazine.

© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Estrella Morente, Vocalist
“Flamenco opens the heart.”

The young flamenco singer Estrella Morente is already a star—one with impeccable flamenco connections. Born in Granada, she grew up surrounded by flamenco artists and aficionados. Her father and musical mentor is legendary singer Enrique Morente and her mother is dancer Aurora Carbonell. At 28, Estrella already boasts a full resume as one of flamenco’s young rising stars. In spite of her youth, Estrella has sown the seeds of her art and her musical gifts across the globe. She is blessed with a pure, crystalline vocal timbre, moving easily between warm, seductive tones and raw, expressive phrases.

Since making her debut as a soloist in 1997 at the prestigious Peña de la Platería in Granada, Estrella has sung at Spain’s major events and venues, including festivals in Seville, Barcelona, Cartagena, and Málaga, as well as the opening ceremony at the Picasso Museum in Málaga that was attended by the Spanish royal family and dignitaries from around the world. On her first recording in 2001, she was accompanied by the great guitarist Manolo Sanlucar. Her recordings have since been used on the soundtracks of films by Carlos Saura and Pedro Almodóvar. She has also won many awards, among them the ONDAS prize for Best Flamenco Performer, and was nominated for a Latin Grammy.

Estrella possesses a profound knowledge of her art as well as innate musical taste. She has become a point of reference for aficionados and newcomers to flamenco singing, combining the early influences of her native Granada with flamenco of the new millennium. She has adhered to simple and untainted song-forms; her singing is neither pure nor orthodox, but contains that edge of personality that makes for a true revolution in the best tradition of flamenco cante. With the popularity of her recordings and her performances throughout Europe and the US, Estrella’s fame has now spread far beyond Spain.