What they're saying about Begoña Olavide & Mudéjar
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Mudéjar comprises some exacting musical scholars and presented a convincing and coherent musical world… Mudéjar’s soul lies in Begoña Olavide’s extravagant musical personality. Her playing was dramatic and virtuosic and her singing – in Spanish and Arabic – earthy and voluptuous. Daniel Carranza’s gorgeous vihuela and Ramiro Amusategui’s ’ud created some striking ensemble work. It is refreshing to listen to a concert whose musical language is so foreign and yet so emotionally alive. Mudéjar is an extraordinary group. |
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Katharine May & Elizabeth Ling |
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What one heard from the fascinating Spanish ensemble Mudejar was riveting… The voice for these musical tales came from the heart and throat of Begona Olavide; Olavide was mesmerizing, no small thanks also to her own virtuosity with the psaltery. No small thanks either to her three nonsinging colleagues: Ramiro Amusategui on the Arab lute, Daniel Carranza on the vihuela or guitar and Carlos Paniagua on various percussion. In the ballads and instrumental items, they rocked and lilted in rhythms of different cultural traditions. Paniagua, not so incidentally, built the group’s instruments in his Andalusian workshop. Mudejar earned for itself a standing ovation, for fine musicianship and for a winning capacity to guide an audience through historic, geographic and artistic distances. |
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Peter Jacobi |
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Letting yourself get carried away by your senses is easily done when you find yourself at a concert like Mudéjar’s yesterday at Musikaste [San Sebastián’s Early Music Cycle]… It turned into a beautiful journey into the past hand in hand with some great musicians… With exquisite taste, Begoña Olavide melded together her singing, her psaltery playing and her leadership of the group… successfully winning over an audience unfamiliar with early music, which by the end of this delicious concert was left gasping for more. |
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María José Cano |
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San Sebastián’s Early Music Cycle witnessed last Tuesday an unforgettable concert by Mudéjar, who delighted the audience who had filled every available seat in the chapel of the convent of Santa Teresa. A total knockout… Mudéjar’s concert, At the gates of Granada, was a rich and exotic artistic journey… Sephardic and Arab rhythms laid down and offered up by extraordinary instrumentalists and the warm and unusual voice of Olavide herself… |
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Iñigo Arbiza |
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Ravishing and surprising. Five musicians, ascetic and intense, were grouped around the superb Begoña Olavide in front of a fascinated full house at the church of the Collège Saint-Michel… Throaty sounds sensually punctuate the story-telling of this warm, natural, supremely open voice. The rhythm of the words and phrases is underlined by a muted percussion whose subtle presence intensifies from time to time as it is called in by Olavide’s finger-clicking or handclaps… the four stringed instruments came eloquently together, masterfully led by the excellent viola player, Fahmi Alqhai… Mudéjar’s musicians [possess] an admirable instrumental expertise and a highly inventive percussive dynamic… |
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Marie-Alix Pleines |
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The Spanish ensemble, Mudéjar – a tour de force, a musical bomb. Not just the music – there was a powerful atmosphere, complicity and harmony between all the musicians, and at the centre of it all, a mysterious goddess, Begoña Olavide, the group’s director, and the fascinating Pedro Estevan, who didn’t hesitate to use his own chair as a percussion instrument. A great and magical event… |
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Stéphane Berney |
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Mudéjar... provides us with some of the most successful examples of how to confront and present Iberian traditions while simultaneously revealing their relationship to the Arab and the wider European world. And on top of all that, rescuing from obscurity delightful instruments played with genuine virtuosity and placed at the service of a very Mediterranean sensuality… Best of all, Mudéjar is providing us with firm guidelines along which a unique alternative in the anodyne musical life of our country can be constructed. |
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VOICE |
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Toques en el tiempo is an enchanting disc. It transcends all categories, in that it could be reviewed not only as a disc of ‘early music’ but also of traditional music, improvisations or contemporary music. The link between these diverse threads is Begoña Olavide’s beautiful honey-coloured voice and the sparkling sound of the psalteries… The Arab-Andalusian music is sung with conviction, passion and a real feeling for the style… Her diction is as clear as a bell, her sense of dramatic timing and narrative contrast impeccable. This recording is a real triumph and I hope that more are on the way. |
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Ivan Moody |
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Toques en el tiempo is a record drenched in passion, Begoña Olavide offering up all the considerable musical and spiritual beauty which she possesses... Sip by sip, song by song, Begoña Olavide´s musical sparkle transforms us into a brilliant beam of light… |
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Miki Torrents |
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Listening to Yul Yul, the opening track on the CD, I ask myself why on earth it isn’t one of the most popular songs of the moment, a massive hit… What is undeniable is that Toques en el tiempo is a delicious piece of work, produced with a combination of warmth and attention to detail… |
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Batonga!, abril 2002 |
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In her latest album – Toques en el tiempo – Begoña Olavide plays all the percussion and stringed instruments, weaving the finest tapestries with her psaltery and embellishing the songs recovered from ancient manuscripts with her exquisite Mediterranean voice... |
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Luis Lapuente |
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Toques en el tiempo is a record which makes one dream of the infinitely greater richness which Spanish culture would have had, if – just for once – intercultural tolerance had prevailed. But the past is brought to vibrant life by the well-timbred voice of this exceptional artist, responsible for every aspect of this recording, which - quite apart from its documentary character – succeeds on its own account. |
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Alfredo Brotons Muñoz |
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Begoña Olavide has developed an astonishing level of musical technique within which ancient melodies and new creations come together in a timeless whole… |
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Ramón Súrio |
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The extraordinary interrelationship between western and Arab musical culture is handled with enormous dash and daring by Mudéjar, playing a fascinating and varied range of instruments... expressively interpreted. The music is put across with technical fluency and poetic strength, offering us performances of outstanding aesthetic and stylistic magnetism... |
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Pablo Queipo de Llano Ocaña |
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Olavide´s incredibly rich, warm voice, her instrumental prowess on the psaltery and the adept accompaniment of her fellow band members all give this disc a fullness that transcends its mournful subject matter… |
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Wes Phillips |
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A CD so wonderful it almost belies description…performed by artists whose whole souls seem to have been poured into these sessions… Ethereal, touching, historically valuable. Simply wonderful. |
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Scott Shuster (Business Week) |
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More or less every period in history has a musical soundtrack which most people associate with it. Toques en el tiempo by the gifted and hardworking Begoña Olavide has just provided me with a new one. A great artist, every one of whose tracks draws you back in time and brings the past into the present. Her new work makes magnificent use of the instruments, her ancient voice and her commitment which marks the whole album. |
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B.J. |
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