Europe

Diobar

Av. del Marquès de l’Argentera, 27, 08003 +34 656 62 11 45 Barcelona, España

Havanna

Hauptstraße 30, 10827 Berlin, +49 30 78899655 Germany

La Bodeguita del Medio

Kaprova 19, 110 00 Staré Město, +420 224 813 922 Praha, Chequia

La Macumba Music Latino bar

Štefánikova 230, 150 00 Praha 5-Anděl, +420 776 795 166 Czechia

Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club

47 Frith St, London W1D 4HT, +44 20 7439 0747 United Kingdom

Salsa Carlos

Yegi’a Kapayim St 10, +972 54-573-7173 Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

Baby’Oh Elche

Carrer Sabadell, 16, 03203 Elx, +34 633 77 80 90 Alicante, Spain

Havana Music Club

Yigal Alon St 126, +972 3-562-3456 Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

Hideaway

2 Empire Mews Stanthorpe Road, Streatham, Londres SW16 2BF +44 20 8835 7070 United Kingdom

Kona Kai

515 Fulham Rd., London SW6 1HD, +44 20 7385 9991 United Kingdom

Mi Barrio

Mojito Club

Carrer del Rosselló, 217, 08008 +34 654 20 10 06 Barcelona, Spain

El Sabor Cubano

Carrer de Marià Cubí, 4, 08006 +34 674 98 88 63 Barcelona, Spain

Salsa! Soho

96 Charing Cross Rd, London WC2H 0JG, +44 20 7379 3277 United Kingdom

Salsa Temple

Victoria Embankment, Temple, London WC2R 2PH, +44 20 7395 3690 United Kingdom

 

Nijmegen is the city that will host this musical meeting with “Cuba Al Revés” as the main theme

Music Meeting Festival was organized in Concertgebouw de Vereeniging and Stadsschouwburg Nijmegen until 2003

This year Latin America will invade the 37^th edition of the Music Meeting Festival with Cuban music from Saturday, June 4^th to Monday, June 6^th at the Park Brakkenstein facilities. This park can accommodate 12,500 visitors and is in the Nijmegen city in the province of Gelderland. Nijmegen has more than 170,000 inhabitants (2015 data provided by the UN) and is very close to the border with Germany.

This festival in the Netherlands will have as its main theme this time Cuba Upside Down. In this event, around 30 concerts will be presented with the participation of established artists and new promises from the Cuban music scene, Spanish, and Brazilian.

Regarding the main theme of this edition, the Dutch trumpeter and Artistic Director of the Music Meeting Festival, Maite Hontelé, pointed out: “I would like to have been born in Havana, to have grown up with Son, Mambo, and even the beginning of Cuban Salsa modern, Timba. But I grew up in Haaften…although almost every day, I listened to Cuban music on cassettes and played it on my trumpet.”

The artists from the Afro-Caribbean Island that will converge at the Music Meeting Festival 2022 are:

Alain Pérez with the Orchestra demonstrates the origin and future of Cuban music

The musical genius in the Salsera scene, Latin-Jazz and Flamenco, Alain Pérez will take the stage on Sunday, June 5th at 11PM for an improvisation party at the Jam. This show will last 50 minutes. Alain with the rhythm section of his orchestra will establish the basic rhythm to which countless musicians will join and improvise, bringing special guests for that day. Who are they? They are still a surprise.

After 24 hours, Alain Pérez returns to the stage, but this time with his young Orchestra for the closing day. They will perform for the first time on Monday, June 6^th from 8:40PM to 10:50PM. Alain with this band of young Cuban artists brings a sound in which traditional Cuban music is intertwined with modern Jazz and Funk.

The same way will also join this celebration of Afro-Caribbean music Osain Del Monte with a group of young percussionists, singers, and dancers. They will recreate during their musical act a traditional cult with initiation rituals to be members of a secret brotherhood. This one-hour act will take place on the first day of the festival, on Saturday, June 4th, starting at 5:30 PM.

Likewise, Music Meeting Festival will feature the percussionist and singer Brenda Navarrete as a special guest in several musical presentations. Brenda has trained in Batá drums and has belonged to Latin Jazz bands such as Joaquín Betancourt and Alain Pérez, as well as in the Interactivo group, where Funk and Ska melodies are mixed with Afro-Cuban rhythms.

Cellist Ana Carla will also be brought to this stage of the festival. She will be on Sunday, June 5^th from 8PM to 8:40PM. Her third studio album is Bahía and has influences from Cuban Son, Tango, Samba, Bossa Nova, Jazz, and even the classic French Chanson. She currently is touring for South America.

Ramón Valle, Marialy Pacheco, Rolando Luna, and Ivan “Melón” Lewis

Joining this constellation of established and emerging Cuban artists on Sunday, June 5^th, starting at 2PM, is the Ping Pong Piano project. This 50-minute musical project brings together the following virtuous of this instrument: Rolando Luna, Marialy Pacheco, Ramón Valle, and Ivan “Melón” Lewis, the latter winner of the Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album for his album Voyager in 2021.

The starting point of this “four-sided” meeting is spontaneous. It consists of placing two grand pianos on stage and letting four stellar pianists converse musically. There will be friendship, rivalry, confrontation, and harmony putting aside their impressive resumes.

“Marialy Pacheco is a concert pianist known for her duets with Omar Sosa and her contagious rhythmic interpretation. Grammy winner Ivan ‘Melón’ Lewis counters this with almost mathematical precision as the founder of modern Cuban Salsa, Timba. Ramón Valle swings across styles and feels best when given the freedom to let his Cuban heritage hang over the music. The quartet of star pianists is completed by the whirlwind Rolando Luna, one of the most important Cuban pianists of the last ten years, who became world-famous for his work with Omara Portuondo”. Fragment extracted from the Music meeting Festival 2022 website. www.musicmeeting.nl

Likewise, the band El Comité will be present (Saturday, June 4th, 10:30 PM – 11:30 PM), the Son Bent Braam orchestra (Saturday, June 4th, 4PM – 5PM), African electronics, percussion from Brazil with the duo made up of Oleg Fateev & Simone Sou, and the New York afrobeat represented by the musical group from Brooklyn, Antibalas.

This interesting congregation of artists will be completed by the Spanish trombonist Rita Payés, one of the emerging artists of the new era of the Catalan scene.

Tickets for the three days of the Music Meeting Festival in Nijmegen are €80 at the box office. It costs €34 daily, and for those under 16 who want to attend, the admission is free.

The wait is over and Fiesta opens its doors with a new season of Latin concerts during the summer

Festival Fiesta has been the point of reference in Italy for Latin American concerts and events for 27 years.

Since 1995 the Fiesta club has been the point of reference for Latin American culture in Italy during summer nights in Rome.

Fiesta is located in the Rosati Tourist Park (Parco Rosati -Eur) and has an area of ​​5,000 square meters with a capacity of 3,500 people. Its distribution consists of an outdoor music room equipped with a stage with a led wall for live music and two dance rooms for different musical styles (Salsa, Mambo, Cha Cha Cha, Bachata, Rumba, Merengue, Timba, reggae, and reggaeton).

“The objective of this festival is to build a permanent cultural bridge between Italy and Latin American citizens living in Rome, promoting the value of integration between peoples and respecting different identities.” Fragment extracted from the website. https://fiestafestival.it/

In this regard, the artistic director Mansur Naziri expressed the following: “Over the years I have witnessed several changes in the audience of Fiesta. Now, we have reached the new generations, those the children of immigrants who were born in Italy feel Italian but still keep their traditions alive, even through music. Next to them are the Italians who dancing and listening to Latin songs have also learned a little Spanish, giving life to a beautiful cultural fusion…”

The most representative Salsa artists who have come to this evocative stage of the Eternal City have been Celia Cruz, Los Van Van, Rubén Blades, Gilberto Santarosa, Tito Puente, Oscar D’ León, and Marc Anthony, among many others.

This year the club with its Fiesta festival will continue to offer the best of the Latin music scene from the traditional to the most current. Here are the Salsa artists who will be performing in the cool of Rome’s nights from June to August.

PUPY Y LOS QUE SON SON

Pupy was the pianist in the Revé Orchestra

The Cuban traditional music orchestra created and directed by the pianist, composer, and director César Pedroso Fernández better known as “Pupy” will be performing on Wednesday, June 1^st, and tickets don’t exceed €17.

Pupy is recognized for being one of the most important figures in Timba and traditional Cuban music. He participated in two emblematic orchestras during his career: Orquesta Revé and Los Van Van. In this last-mentioned band, he was one of the founders along with his partner and friend Juan Formell.

After 32 years of artistic career, on October 4^th, 2001, he formed his band Pupy y Los Que Son Son. Its name derives from the recognition of “Son” as a musical genre where his roots come from, and the style of the band is the fusion of the different instrumental formats with the “Tumbao”.

HAVANA D’PRIMERA

Alexander Abreu spent his childhood in Cienfuegos city (Cuba), where he began playing the trumpet at ten years old.

The band of more than ten musicians created in 2008 and founded by the Cuban trumpeter, singer, and composer Alexander Abreu will take the Fiesta stage on Friday, June 3^rd, and you can get the ticket for €30.

Alexander Abreu has become one of the most versatile and acclaimed Cuban musicians in Afro-Cuban music. “I have always seen Havana D’Primera with 15 people on stage, and everyone said that it was impossible, that it would be too expensive, too difficult to move… It is how we started: 14 or 15 of us and a lot of positive energy, now we are stronger than ever.” Abreu commented.

Havana D’Primera’s first album is Haciendo Historia released in 2009, followed by Cantor del Pueblo (2018), A Romper el Coco (2019), and Será que se acabó (2021).

LOS VAN VAN

Los Van Van was the first Cuban group to replace a solo singer with a vocal quartet.

The musical orchestra founded by Juan Formell in Havana (Cuba) in December 1969 will arrive on Saturday, August 6^th. They will present their fusion of Cuban Son, Jazz, and Rock with the incorporation of percussion, trombones, keyboards, electronic violins, flutes, bass, and drums for a rhythmic and harmonic sound that complements the quartet of voices, and you can get tickets for a value of €30.

The young Bachata idol will celebrate more than a decade of experience with a series of concerts in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland

Royce recorded “My Angel” a single that was part of the soundtrack of the sequel Fast and Furious 7.

The internationally famous Latin superstar, Prince Royce, will tour Europe with five concerts called the Classic Tour in which he will perform his greatest hits and most recent singles in a unique and special environment celebrating his ten years of artistic career.

The tour will cover the five most important cities in Europe starting on June 6^th at the Zénith multipurpose indoor stadium in Paris (France), he will go through Madrid (Spain) with Las Noches del Botánico on Friday, June 24^th, after he will be in the city of Zurich (Switzerland) on June 25^th, will continue at the Fiesta festival in Rome (Italy) on July 2^nd, and of course, will end his visit to Europe by closing the Pal Mundo Latin-Caribbean Festival in The Hague (Netherlands) on July 3^rd.

“EUROPE! See you this summer on the #PRClassicTour to sing all my classics. I’m crazy to see them again!” The singer of Dominican descent expressed this on May 4^th through his Facebook account.

Tickets for the Classic Tour range from €40 to €100, and you can purchase them online through his official website. https://www.princeroyce.com/

The last stop to see Prince Royce in concert on the European continent will be at the Pal Mundo Festival in The Hague, a city located in the west of the Netherlands. Here, nature and the Latin world will come together for the first time in the huge urban park in the middle of the city, Zuiderpark, located at 2533 SP, Den Haag/The Hague.

Pal Mundo will take place during the first weekend of July, and it will have approximately 50,000 attendees from all over Europe who will enjoy urban and Afro-Caribbean music, dance to Latin rhythms, and broaden their culinary tastes with typical food of the South American and the Caribbean Islands.

Geoffrey Royce Rojas de León was born on May 11^th, 1989, in the Bronx (New York).

Continuing in the same tone, Prince Royce, the artistic name of Geoffrey Royce Rojas, in the last decade has obtained almost 100 million followers on his social networks, 22 world hits on radio charts, 24 Billboard Awards, 20 Premios lo Nuestro, 19 Premios Juventud, 6 Latin AMAs, and 14 Latin Grammy® nominations.

In the last eight years, this 33-year-old artist has collaborated with Selena Gómez on the hit Already Missing You, Gerardo Ortiz (Moneda), Shakira (Deja Vu), Gente de Zona and Arturo Sandoval (Tumbao), Zendaya (X), Marc Anthony (Adicto), Thalia (You Lost My Love), Daddy Yankee (Come With Me), and more recently Natti Natasha (Antes Que Salga El Sol), Mau y Ricky (Doctor), and the single that trended on the global YouTube chart along with María Becerra released on March 4^th, Te Espero.

This New Yorker artist has six studio albums: Prince Royce (2010), his debut album, with which he rocketed up the popularity list with songs like Stand By Me and Corazón Sin Cara. His next record production was Phase II (2012) and was followed by Soy El Mismo (2013), Double Vision (2015), Five (2017), and his last recording to date Alter Ego (2020). This sixth album released on February 7^th contains two discs “Genesis” and “Enigma” for a total of 23 songs. The genres that you will find in this compilation discs are Salsa, Bachata, Latin Pop, Reggaeton, and Trap.

“I’m excited to share Classic Tour with all my fans, who have been there for me unconditionally since the beginning of my career”… I’m still here thanks to all of you, and this tour is for you. I am full of gratitude.” Prince Royce