José Menese is one of the most revered flamenco legends of Madrid: he even has a shrine in his honor in the plaza Huarte de San Juan (Puerta del Ángel). Here, since they put his name back in 2018, high-level singers go up during the last month of summer.
This year will be no exception: on September 6, 7, 13 and 14 at 20:30 pm there will be free concerts in which singing, percussion and guitar will reign to the rhythm of a genre with a lot of feeling.
On Friday September 6, the festival will begin with the performance of the Sevillian singer Manuel de la Tomasa, who has flamenco in his blood. He is the grandson of the artist José Gregorio Soto (better known as ‘José de la Tomasa’) and a relative of Manuel Vallejo (II Llave de Oro del Cante in 1926).
On Saturday 7, it will be the turn of Antonia Contreras. The malagueña has toured the world with her singing and now, after surprising us with a concert of Semana Santa last March, she returns to Madrid to pay tribute to Menese.
Juan de Dios Tamayo and David de Caño Roto. || Editorial credit: Ayuntamiento de Madrid.
On Friday 13 will sing David de Caño Roto accompanied by guitarist Juan de Dios Tamayo and artist Antonio Losada on percussion. On Saturday 14 there will be a show in which you can enjoy flamenco palos (joy, tango, bulería, seguiriya and more) of the hand of the singer Beatriz Ballesteros. The dancers Adrián Mejías and Angustias Mesa will perform the songs that will be the finishing touch to a festival that returns the most traditional rhythms to the capital.
History of a templete
The José Menese pavilion was built in the 1980s by Salvador Pérez Arroyo, the architect behind the construction of the Moncloa Lighthouse. The kiosk, a perfect cylinder of metal structure, caught the attention of Menese, who lived in Puerta del Ángel almost all his life (no more and no less than half a century). One of the cantaor’s dreams was that the space would house music. That’s why, upon the artist’s death in 2016, the Madrid City Council decided to turn it into the templete we know today.
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