“Aruán Ortiz and his ensemble were called to inaugurate the XVI edition of the Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia with the original Flamenco Criollo project. Ortiz, a pianist and composer born in Santiago de Cuba but resident of Brooklyn, is an artist active on the American jazz scene for more than fifteen years, cultivating a musical vision nourished by different and transversal stylistic references.

An approach that finds fertile ground in Flamenco Criollo, as was evident that evening before a large audience at Teatro Valli. The crowd was swept up in a vibrant crescendo that blended music and dance in a series of stylistic vignettes—initially a bit disjointed, but increasingly cohesive and powerful—seamlessly connecting Arabic melismas and Iberian influences, ultimately flowing into Afro-Cuban expressiveness.

The result of two years of research conducted by Ortiz himself on the traces of melodies of Moorish origin that migrated to colonial Cuba through Spain between the 17th and 18th centuries to finally transform into popular songs in the Cuban melting pot, Flamenco Criollo debuted in 2021 as a commission from the Flamenco Biënnale Nederland. An operation that brought together around the piano of the Cuban artist a group of musicians, singers and dancers of different backgrounds and origins, who here in Reggio Emilia have returned to propose this particular project in a renewed guise.

Artists originating from different countries such as Morocco, Palestine, Cuba, the United States and Spain called upon to combine, among others, the sounds of Al-Andalus—or Islamic Spain—with ritual rhythms from Africa in a changing amalgam, where different timbre colors are mixed together. From George Ziadeh’s oud to Martín Meléndez’s cello, to the variegated percussions of Fernando Favier, Inor Sotolongo and Yomar Amador, the musical progression offered—more than a true fusion of expressive worlds—a sequence of different atmospheres, each substantially distinct in a stylistic juxtaposition shaped with increasing effectiveness thanks to the increasingly fluidity of the different instrumental dialogues, discreetly enriched by the interventions of Aruán Ortiz’s piano and synth and embellished by the distinct but complementary voices of Malika Zarra and Susana Orta.

The musical kaleidoscope was completed by the interventions of the dancers Niurka Agüero and María Moreno, capable of alternating Afro-Cuban and flamenco incursions in a choreographic dialogue sometimes woven at a distance and sometimes engaged in a more direct manner. Two artists who proved to be the main protagonists of some of the most engaging moments of an evening that ended perhaps too soon and was greeted with an encore obtained thanks to the applause of a decidedly warm audience.”