Viva Toronto

Date: Sunday, November 21, 5 pm
Price: $40 regular, $36 Friends, $30 seniors and students
Three-show Duende Festival package: $80 regular, $72 Friends, $60 students and seniors (Add all three shows to your cart. Discount will be applied at checkout.)
Includes same-day Museum admission

Two blisteringly talented Toronto-based ensembles. Two rollicking musical explorations of the links between flamenco and other diverse performance traditions.

On November 21, the Museum Auditorium will host a not-to-be-missed double bill for the 2021 Duende Festival featuring guitarist Tarek Ghriri and flamenco vocalist Shirlita La Pili.

Tándem

First, Palestinian-Syrian guitarist Ghriri will channel centuries-old but still unfolding conversations between Eastern art forms and flamenco. Titled Tándem, meaning “coming together,” the performance will explore the abundant connections between Arab and Iberian cultures.

Like its birthplace in southern Spain, flamenco is bursting with Arab influences, owing to the 750-year span when broad swaths of the Iberian Peninsula were under Muslim rule. Joined by Kiyo Asaoka (dance), Heidi Chan (flute/shinobue), George Crotty (cello), Nour Kdn (percussion), Murshed Khalid (vocals), Maria Nicolaidis (flamenco dance), and Gino Tantalo (vocals), Ghriri will unearth these shared artistic roots — and tap into their unlimited potential to inspire creativity, community, movement, and song.

Ida y Vuelta

Flamenco singer Shirlita La Pili makes her joyful return to the Museum stage for a Latin-American-music-inflected night of flamenco performance.

Her innovative new tablao opens windows into musical voyages between Latin America and Spain. Classic folk songs and flamenco wash together in these waters, creating música aflamencada — music inflected with flamenco characteristics.

The journey between these waters is old and eternally shifting to and fro — ida y vuelta — creating new sounds from the old and familiar, while treading delicately and respectfully between both worlds.

Ida y Vuelta features an all-star ensemble of performers, including La Pili (vocals), Rocio Conde (flamenco dance), Ruben Esguerra (kuisi bunsi flute), Nicolas Hernandez (guitar), and Chendy Leon (percussion).

Viva Toronto is presented as part of the Museum’s seventh annual Duende Festival. Returning to the Museum Auditorium for the 2021 edition, it is a joyous celebration of flamenco and its rich connections to diverse cultures, performance styles, and storytelling traditions.