alCANTARaMANUEL - MAYTE MARTÍN

MAYTE MARTÍN guitar and vocals
ALEJANDRO HURTADO guitar
GUILLERMO PRATS double bass
BIEL GRAELLS violin
CHICO FARGAS percussion

MAYTE MARTÍN composition and artistic direction
MAYTE MARTÍN and NELSA BARÓ arrangements

Twelve stirring songs built around the verses of Málagan poet Manuel Alcántara. Twelve scenes of children, war, Miguel Hernández, Altolaguirre, Picasso, the sea, Málaga… The respect for the author’s poetry is exquisite, the enhancement of its message, the instrumentation, the variety of rhythms.

After listening to the album and enjoying the meticulous way in which it has been constructed, you realise you do not need any other flamenco than the one that naturally abides in Mayte’s throat. The one that emits that elegantly intended flamenco sound to guide both the voice and the poem southwards.

Nothing compares to the sincerity of Mayte Martín’s voice, to its richness of range, to the warm melancholy she uses to free the verses of the poet.

Next scheduled dates

We currently have no shows scheduled.

EL PERIÓDICO, 24 JUN 2009

LUIS TROQUEL

...she combined decadent beauty and temperance in each piece: one on each side of the scales, a balance only the great maestros know how to achieve. With Olvido Lanza's violin as a chromatic counterpoint, she revealed her most intimate side in her guise as a literary singer-songwriter. Offering flamenco and bolero, a little bit of blues and an authentic porteño tango that received perhaps the most resounding ovation.

AVUI, 25 JUN 2009

PERE PONS

The Grec opened its musical programme with a poetic and emotional volley of the kind that is hard to forget. It didn’t need to resort to calling on a re-consecrated great or the exclusivity of a star from distant lands. Instead, a petite woman wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a candid gaze and mid-length hair, a neighbour of Poble-sec, was the architect of one of the most magical and captivating nights to have been witnessed for years at the magnificent Montjuïc hole that aspires to be a Hellenic amphitheatre.

Poems of (from) love and death that shun all sublimation and transcendence to lodge like a bullet in the animal of reminiscences, experiences, hopes and memories that exists in every elusive being. The musical translation of the Alcantara Martin universe lays a drape of exquisite tenderness over stories that convey melancholy, drama and even tragedy.

LA VANGUARDIA, 11 OCT 2009

ESTEBAN LINÉS

Barcelona’s María Teresa Martín Cadierno is widely acknowledged by experts to be the best female flamenco voice of her generation. And in addition to this appraisal, there is the no less important one that deems her an interpreter capable of embracing other stylistic challenges with similar fortune and thoroughness, something at which she is already beginning to excel.

With the help of José Luis Garrido’s production Martín has put music to a dozen of the author’s poems and has done so with exciting and exacting accessibility. Accessibility, here, is synonymous with the qualitative osmosis with which someone hears you, with the person who listens to you without necessarily being a seasoned expert in flamenco palos or antiquated reductionisms.

B!RITMOS, 13 OCT 2009

ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ

A Mayte Martín album is a celebration, a long-awaited prize, and a sip of crystalline water to quench our thirst. That this album is the palpable representation of her latest show, alCANTARaMANUEL, is also a reward for our souls...

One after another, Mayte's songs seem to host a magical substance, something that nourishes the heart, our mind and our feelings.

The Catalan cantaora musically braids twelve poems that touch you with their content, her vocal performance and her music. Mayte's warm voice seems to have indulged every word and rhythm to create a uniquely beautiful piece of work. It is as if the artist, who also plays the guitar, had wanted to extract all of the emotion that Manuel Alcántara injected into his writing, full of melancholy, pain, life, memories and beauty.

The album has a flamenco sound, although traces of other influences can be detected. But with or without labels, each piece stands on its own merit.

...alCANTARaMANUEL is one of the all-time greats of Spanish music. You might think I’m exaggerating, but listen to it yourself and tell me I’m mistaken...

ViSaDo, 13 NOV 2009

TERE GRADÍN

it is a sensitive and delicate work that succeeds in poignantly evoking the light-filled universe of the poet...

In the verses brought to life by the voice of Mayte Martín, you feel the vitality, the lyricism and the intimate nature of Alcantara’s poetry. The singer and composer has used a wide range of influences to put music to his words. There is flamenco, one of the poems takes the form of a bolero, and another finds its home in a resounding tango.

Versatile and uniquely talented, everything that Mayte Martín sings she sings tastefully and because of that taste she does it with extreme sensitivity, intimacy and emotion.

...and it will not be without reason, that the singer will have outshined the cantaora, but these are the decisions we must make if we are to enjoy the honesty of a complete artist.

LA OPINIÓN DE MÁLAGA, 20 NOV 2009

JUAN GAITÁN

We never know when something magical will happen, when a miracle will suddenly take place and leave us perplexed. It happened to me, not more than three or four days ago, with Mayte Martín’s alCANTARaMANUEL album...

...twelve poems by Manolo Alcantara put to music and sung by a breathtakingly sweet, exquisite interpreter, in love with the poetry of an essential, important and clear poet.

The album is a prodigy of harmony. The poems of Alcantara, treated with finesse and love, reach their full potential, a difficult thing to achieve in this instance...

After listening to the album and enjoying the meticulous way in which it has been constructed, you realise you do not need any other flamenco than the one that naturally abides in Mayte’s throat. The one that emits that elegantly intended flamenco sound to guide both the voice and the poem southwards.

...For all that one would like to listen without prejudice, one has to admit that a profound understanding of flamenco must be essential to be able to give such an ethereal and yet, at the same time, unwavering presence to each of the pieces.

Nothing on the album is excessive; everything is subtly accommodated with finesse. Nothing compares to the sincerity of Mayte Martín’s voice, to its richness of range, to the warm melancholy she uses to free the verses of the poet. Verses that are filled with the essence of Málaga, as a fundamental presence, unalterable, vibrant and alive.

EL PAÍS

ANGEL ÁLVAREZ CABALLERO

Martín has undoubtedly found a great source of inspiration in Alcántara's verses, which she brings to her work in pieces of immense beauty.

EL MUNDO

ALFREDO GRIMALDOS

...the flamenco is everywhere: perfectionism with heat and subtlety. Mayte only does things she believes in. But she takes great care with all that she does.

BABELIA

FERMÍN LOBATÓN

...there are songs that, in their own right, can be considered a small jewel...

DEFLAMENCO.COM

PABLO SAN NICASIO

An experienced artist who plays the guitar with joy, who sings and undoes, who wins over the audience with audacious humour and who presents to society with tremendous character, a poet who is for the most part unknown.

Exquisite respect for the poetry of the author, the enhancement of its message, instrumentation, the variety of rhythms.

Last night the sweetest of Catalan singers achieved the goal of what, for her, is the essence of good music: art that conveys emotion, above all sadness, using it, in this case, with a smile, the verse and the humour. To make us all cry like little children.

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