He's not even twenty yet and he's on his way to becoming one of the established talents in the flamenco keyboard music scene. His name is Anton CortésMallorcan, and to create his emotional arc he has presented in Jerez the concert that generates in him that feeling of anxiety and constant longing, that is, the one that invokes Camarón de la Isla y Paco de Lucía.
The proposal has been difficult for us to grasp, thanks to the most dysfunctional space we know of worldwide. The Lazotea GoteraIt is an even greater shame for a festival celebrating its thirtieth anniversary to be unable to remove from the scene the character who spent the entire night recording the concert with a mobile phone, and to make matters worse, the facilities provided to the specialized press in this auditorium are unworthy of the merits of the city that hosts a competition that we have been covering since its first edition.
This explains why expert critics don't go to La Gotera. And with the usual absence of a program to look at, even though we attended a concert with the tension accumulated in a young person of the age of Anton Cortés, who breathes music as an entity that is rhythmically aggressive, but deeply sensitive at the same time, making use of a diaphanous clarity of thought from the first notes of the granaína Reflection of the Moon, by Paco de Lucía, adopting from there an emotional transformation to the limit of his possibilities.
The Colombian woman also from Algeciras, Monastery of SaltIt allowed him to translate a problem-solving ability based on excessively accelerated knowledge, but feeling it as his own, making his own the feelings that genius proposes in memory and even fixing the explosions of energy, as in the tangos of Camarón de la Isla, You are like a labyrinth, which we take with an almost whimsical, festive tone.
But Cortés's proposal also represented a dialectical exercise in differentiating each of the themes, with the feeling put into the interpretation of the rondeña predominating. cat cave, or of the composition Luzia, in which the performer managed to extract the essence of what he was looking for, which is nothing more than subtly reflecting his own personality through his references.
The pianist truly shone in his ability to reinterpret styles in each of the variations., like joys The Barrosa, or the tangos of Camarón A rose for your hairbut also when expressing his freedom of expression in rumba Spring, in which he demonstrated the expressive maturity of someone who is on the path to approaching the idea of an improvised fantasy.
"As we left the venue, we recalled Mozart, who said that silences are as important as notes, something Antón Cortés will have to consider. This doesn't diminish the feeling that we were listening to a bearer of the word." flamenco with musicality and whom we find in an accelerated process of refinement."
Cortés's pulse reflected the continued beauty contained in his concertWith this, he achieved a true unity of style, form, and communicability with the listener, through a sound that was expected in a young man still in the maturing phase, but with a condensed discourse and a profound conclusion.
This profound denouement is illuminated by the revealed language, which adapts successfully to traditional classical forms, such as the guajira. Fairground Lantern, by Paco de Lucía, in which he embraced a more personal lyricism.
However A Camarón and Paco de Lucía It is not a mere static repetition. It is like a river of sound that flows and subtly changes color through rhythmic machinery, culminating in a propulsive energy that fades into a final coda of timeless beauty.
Cortés has a technique that seeks what is impactful, but also the flamenco sound, as in the legend of time, the bulería-bambera that Camarón de la Isla performed under the inspiration of Federico Garcia Lorcawhere he maintained a steady pulse, with clear articulation, allowing each note to be audible and not a sonic shadow, which leads us to the corollary of why he injects expressive warmth into his greatest concern.
One last point to remember is that Antón Cortés stands out for his ability to maintain tension for the audience, without the quality of the sound declining in the last movement, as well as for his accentuation, which is actually what gives a marked vitalistic character to his concert.
As we left the space, with a stiff neck unbecoming of the 21st century, we remembered Mozartwho said that silences are as important as notes, something Antón Cortés will have to consider. This doesn't change the perception that we were listening to a bearer of the torch. flamenco with musicality and which we find in an accelerated process of perfection, which it will reach as it approaches the peak of the expressive and sonic possibilities of the instrument.
Credits
A Camarón and Paco de Lucíaby Antón Cortés
XXX Jerez Festival
La Gotera de Lazotea Theatre
March 2th 2026
Piano: Antón Cortés
