Rocío Márquez

Rocío Márquez is one of the greatest references in contemporary flamenco. Her discography shows her love for the tradition of the genre, but also the need to push its boundaries, exploring and experimenting with melodies, instrumentation, arrangements, and lyrics.

Early in her career, in 2008, Márquez was awarded the legendary Lámpara Minera – the most important distinction in the world of flamenco – and since then she has released five studio albums, very well received by the public and critics. From her debut, ‘Aquí y Ahora’ (2009), her subsequent works – ‘Claridad’ (2012), ‘El Niño’ (2014), ‘Firmamento’ (2017) and ‘Visto en El Jueves’ (2019) – are the chronicle of a take-off and show an artist in a continuous search for herself through music.

She has performed on some of the most emblematic international stages – Teatro Real de Madrid, Palau de la Música de Barcelona, Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla, La Zarzuela, Shakespeare’s Globe (London), Olympia (Paris), Philharmonie (Luxembourg), Dusseldorf Opera – as well as major festivals, including Monkey Week and Primavera Sound Barcelona where she performed the acclaimed ‘El Niño’. In 2014, she recorded for Deutsche Grammophon with the Spanish National Orchestra conducted by Maestro Josep Pons and in 2018 she shared the stage with Jorge Drexler, with whom she premiered ‘Aquiles Puentes Subtilles’.

In 2019, Rocío Márquez edited ‘Visto En El Jueves’, a work that revisits and reinvents old cantes, different palos and Spanish popular music that Rocío has collected over time in the teeming El Jueves street market in Seville. The album won the prestigious Les Victoires du Jazz award in the Best World Music Album category and was presented on various Portuguese stages, including Águeda (Festim, 2019), Lisbon (CCB, 2020), Porto (Casa da Música, 2020), Funchal (Teatro Municipal Baltazar Dias, 2021), Lagos (Centro Cultural de Lagos, 2021) and Braga (Theatro Circo, 2022).

The next phase in Marquez’s career arrived in May 2022 with Tercer Cielo, an album conceived in collaboration with the electronic music producer Bronquio. Its starting point is flamenco. We find rhythmic, lyrical and melodic structures of bulerías, rumba, pregón, seguiriyas, tangos, garrotín, milonga, debla, toná, soleá or verdiales. Each of these palos is then worked according to different styles of electronic music, such as techno, electro and break. The result is a thunderous collision between the past and the future which transcends musical genres and is being pointed in Spain as one of the albums of the year, ‘destined to mark an era’ (El País, Jun 2022).

‘Tercer Cielo’ has also gathered great praise for its live presentation, which can essentially happen in two formats: one for theatres, with artistic direction by Emilio Rodríguez Cascajosa and Juan Diego Martín Cabeza, and another more classic, sung and played, for outdoor and festival performances.

PRESS QUOTES

“An album that will certainly mark an era” EL PAÍS

“Alternative, transgressive and erudite flamenco” LE MONDE

“Rocío is at the peak of her career” MONDOSONORO 

“Rocío Márquez, the jewel of flamenco.” LE MONDE

“One of the most important voices in contemporary flamenco.” PÚBLICO