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The Great Voice of Contemporary Flamenco, DIEGO EL CIGALA Launches Major
North American Tour, including SFJazz, Walt Disney Concert Hall and more
Newest CD Romance de la Luna Tucumana Reinvents Tango and Argentine Folk Classics,
Includes Moving Virtual Duet with Mercedes Sosa
Latin Grammy-winning Disk Set for U.S. Release on September 23
on Universal Music Latino Entertainment
"He radiates a magnetic mix of winking charm and unpredictable vitriol reminiscent of a singer from an
entirely different milieu, Frank Sinatra." - The New York Times
"Diego has one of the most beautiful flamenco voices of our time, a voice of sweetness that flows over
everything."- Paco de Lucía
“Flamenco royalty” BBC
DIEGO EL CIGALA
Thurs Oct 23
Sat
Oct 25
Thurs Oct 30
Fri
Oct 31
Sat
Nov 1
Sun
Nov 2
Wed
Nov 5
Sat
Nov 8
Tue
Nov 11
Wed
Nov 12
Fri
Nov 14
Sat
Nov 15
Tues
Nov 18
Thurs Nov20
Sat
Nov 22
2014/2015 TOUR
Calgary, AB, CN
Vancouver, BC, CN
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
Folsom, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Stamford, CT
Hanover, NH
Cambridge, MA
Toronto, ON, CN
Washington, DC
Durham, NC
Miami, FL
Epcor Centre / Jack Singer Hall
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
SFJazz Center
SFJazz Center
SFJazz Center
SFJazz Center
Stage One – Three Stages at Folsom Lake College
LA Phil / Walt Disney Concert Hall
Stamford Ctr for the Arts / Palace Theatre
Dartmouth College / Spaulding Auditorium
World Music/CRASHarts / Berklee Perf Ctr
The Royal Conservatory / Koerner Concert Hall
George Washington U. / Lisner Auditorium
Carolina Theatre of Durham
Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theatre
The dedication by Diego El Cigala in Romance de la Luna Tucumana, his most recent U.S.
release, tells the story in a few words, clearly and elegantly:
“My eternal thanks to Bebo Valdés for giving me the confidence I needed to travel beyond
flamenco and explore other musical worlds.”
In Romance de la Luna Tucumana, released on CD September 23 on Universal Music Latino
Entertainment to coincide with his first major North American tour, Cigala, as he´s commonly
called, reinvents classics from the tango and the Argentine folk repertoire, including “Nieblas del
Riachuelo,” “Naranjo en Flor,” “Por Una Cabeza,” “Balderrama” and “Canción Para Un Niño En
La Calle” (Song For a Street Child), a posthumous, electronic duet with the late singer Mercedes
Sosa. In his album notes, Cigala writes about his excitement at getting the approval of
Mercedes’s son to add her voice, coincidentally in the same key, to his interpretation. “... One
final, wonderful gift from the world beyond,” Cigala concludes his notes. “Thank you, Mercedes,
great mother of Latin America!”
Romance is Cigala´s first studio tango recording. Initially released in Mexico, and only digitally
in the United States, the album won a Latin GRAMMY for Best Tango Album in 2013.
“When I finished Cigala & Tango, [his live tango recording] I wanted more,” he wrote in the
notes for Romance “Around the same time, in my travels in Argentina I got to know the
repertoire of Mercedes Sosa and became a real fan of her work. It was through her that I came
across “Balderrama”, the chacarera “Déjame que me vaya” (Let Me Go), “Canción de las
simples cosas” (Song of Simple Things) and Atahualpa Yupanqui and Pedro Aznar’s “Romance
de la luna tucumana” (Romance of the Tucumana Moon)”
For Cigala, bridging musical traditions has become an art form. A writer once gave it a name:
“acigalar,” a play on words in Spanish with acicalar, to do up, to polish – Cigala style.
It is the kind of touch that cannot be learned in books or acquired in a lab; it has to be lived. Not
surprisingly, when asked recently in an interview what music he listened to, he mentioned in the
same breath Maria Callas, Mozart and Ray Charles. “Listening to all that is how your ear gets
bigger. I’m a flamenco singer, but I’m not about to just listen to flamenco.”
Born into a family of Spanish Gypsy artists in Madrid, Ramón Jiménez Salazar, better known as
Diego El Cigala, (El Cigala, roughly “the prawn,” alluded to his thin frame), was a promising
young flamenco singer with a bright, open-ended future, winning a flamenco singing prize and a
television singing contest by age 12. Soon he was working with major flamenco artists such as
the singer Camarón de la Isla, guitarists Paco Peña, Tomatito, Gerardo Núñez and Vicente
Amigo, as well as dancers Farruco, Carmen Cortés and Joaquín Cortés. His path seemed set.
In 1997, at 29, he recorded his first album under his own name, Undebel, followed in 2000 by
Entre Bareta Y Canasta. It is around this time that he met Oscar-winning film director and
Grammy-winning music producer Fernando Trueba, then working on his Latin jazz feature film
Calle 54. By Trueba’s account, Cigala saw a rough cut of the film and “fell in love” with
“Lagrimas Negras,” a track featuring two great Cuban masters, the pianist, arranger and
bandleader Bebo Valdés (1918-2013) and bassist Israel “Cachao” López (1918-2008). A year
later, Valdés appeared on two tracks of Cigala’s third album, Corren Tiempos de Alegría. Their
recording session was such a special affair (“Everybody in the studio was crying -- even the
prompter,” wrote Trueba) that it led to Lágrimas Negras (2003), a brilliant collaboration
remaking a repertoire of (mostly) Cuban music with a flamenco inflection. The recording
included a version of the classic tango “Nieblas del Riachuelo.” It was Cigala’s first tango
performance on record and it is one of the highlights of the disc. Lágrimas Negras won a Latin
Grammy and became an improbable worldwide success. In fact, the recording also spawned a
feature length video that became an unexpected hit on many PBS television stations.
While Cigala has since released flamenco projects, he also recorded Dos Lágrimas (2008), a
follow up of sorts to Lágrimas Negras and Cigala & Tango (2010), a selection of tangos reinterpreted, recorded live in concert in Buenos Aires. Romance de la Luna Tucumana (Tucumán
is a province in Argentina’s northwest) includes Cigala´s distinct interpretation of both tangos
and Argentina´s rural folk music.
His relationship with tango started early on in his life. His father José de Córdoba, a singer, once
had a contract that took him to Argentina. “When he came back, he would sing tangos at home, “
he recalled in an interview with an Argentine newspaper. “I grew up with those songs.”
From early on in his explorations, be it of Cuban music or tango, it was clear that Cigala was not
out to mimic anybody -- especially classic interpreters such as Carlos Gardel or Roberto
Goyeneche who, each in his own time, set the standards for tango singing.
“Why try to sing like Gardel or Goyeneche? For that, you already have them. And they are
geniuses at that,” said Cigala about his approach to tango singing. “The idea here was to sing
tango as I felt it, from my point of view, with my experiences.”
Touring Lineup:
Diego El Cigala
Jaime Calabuch “Jumitus”
Dan Ben Lior
Yelsy Heredia
Isidro Suarez
Voice
Piano
Electric guitar
Double Bass
Percussion
CD Release:
Romance de la Luna Tucumana
U.S. CD release date Sept 23, 2014
Universal Music Latino Entertainment
2015 Concerts:
Sun
May 3
Tues
May 5
Wed
May 6
Fri
May 8
Irvine, CA
Quebec City, CN
Montreal, CN
New York, NY
Irvine Barclay Theatre
Le Palais Montcalm
Place des Arts de Montreal
Carnegie Hall