Together with guitarist Pedro Rojas Ogáyar, she unfolds her unique requiem reimagined at the Auditorio de Tenerife
This Saturday (March 20) at 7.30 p.m., the Auditorio de Tenerife is staging the flamenco show Himno vertical. Cantaora Rocío Márquez and guitarist Pedro Rojas Ogáyar take over the Chamber Hall with their personal spin on a requiem.
Rocío Márquez is recognised as one of the leading flamenco artists of the 21st century. As a singer, she continues the tradition of innovating within the genre. Over three decades, she has built her career on rigorous research, creativity, and performance excellence, making a significant contribution to establishing flamenco as a prominent force in contemporary music.
A requiem is traditionally a musical form for funerals and masses honouring the deceased. In this work, it becomes a Himno vertical that honours not only endings but also beginnings, flow, and transformation. This requiem is a collective expression-a ritual of both farewell and welcome. It invites us to reconsider death and life not as opposites, but as parts of a continuous cycle. The production is supported on tour by the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM) under Spain’s Ministry of Culture.
Himno vertical is presented as a spiral with no beginning or clearly defined end. At its centre is emptiness: the space in which creation and dissipation come together in eternal equilibrium. Far from being a tragic destiny, death is understood here to be a resting point in the cycle of life. It is not an abrupt interruption but a pause in the spiral’s breathing; a point of return and rediscovery. If we interpret life as a straight line moving forward, then we must see death as the turning that transforms that line into a loop, making it return and reformulating it.
This requiem does not aim to offer consolation or explanation, but instead views death as part of an ongoing process, free from drama or finality. The ritual shapes this process, serving as both a farewell and a transition, and as a connection to the eternal. In this pagan ceremony, participants do not pray or ask for intervention; they express gratitude and celebrate. Everyday objects become sacred, words are quiet, and gestures serve as offerings.
The unending spiral of cyclical life underscores the idea of eternity in change. In this project, the circle encompasses each transition, moment, and turn. Life is not seen as a series of fragmented and linear episodes but as a tide that rises and ebbs; a pulse in which each end carries within it the kernel of a new beginning. Hence, the spiral is the heart of this requiem. It is an eternal movement that does not seek culmination but simply to exist in a constant turning back upon itself, expanding inwardly and outwardly while simultaneously embracing the eternal and the ephemeral.
The tickets can be purchased at a single price of €15 and €5 for audiences under 30 on the website www.auditoriodetenerife.com, at the auditorium’s box office, or by calling 902 317 327 from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Check the special discounts for students, unemployed people and large families, among others.