Bunbury's voice stands firm in New York, the first of the concerts of his farewell tour

Enrique Bunbury during his concert on Friday at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, New York.

/ MARIA ANTONIA SANCHEZ-VALLEJO

It is hard to believe that

, the name of the tour with which Enrique Bunbury says goodbye to the stage, and not to music, is really the definitive one.

It is difficult to accept that his throat problems take him away from his natural space, the direct one, when listening to the voice, as powerful and dedicated as that of a beginner, who squandered in the concert with which he started this Friday in New York the first part of the tour, the American;

a dozen performances as a prologue to the Spanish stage, until next July 22 in Cádiz.

An end point to his long solo career that, judging by the enthusiasm of the musician and that of his fans, never seems to come.

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Enrique Bunbury (Zaragoza, 54 years old), a burgundy suit and contagious energy, had an audience that filled the beautiful Kings Theater in Brooklyn to the brim (3,300 seats) chanting and vibrating for almost two hours of concert, in which he reeled off twenty themes, plus four encores, belonging to his stage as a soloist but also to the previous one as leader of the group Héroes del Silencio.

“We are celebrating 35 years of songs, of recordings;

since 1987 when the first single from Héroes del Silencio came out, we are going to review the entire discography, also looking back at the time of Héroes”, the group that the musician from Zaragoza led for a decade until its dissolution in 1996. a compilation concert, of great but also intimate successes, as he reminded the audience.

An audience that had plenty of seats in the beautiful stalls or in the Kings amphitheater, a venerable theater opened in 1929 as a movie palace and restored in the past decade.

The audience continued standing, jubilant, bouncing, each one of the verses of the musician from Zaragoza.

Hence the incredulity of many of those present at the farewell message with which the concert closed: “Don't forget about us.

See you forever."

At this Friday's concert, the first of the American tour due to visa problems that forced him to relocate two concerts, those in Chicago -the planned debut- and Houston, the musician became a giant: not a trace of the pandemic that separated him from the stage for two years, but did not deprive him of contact with his followers thanks to

nor of the production under study, especially fruitful the first year of the health crisis.

His New York performance repertoire ranged from new to classic;

contrary to the enthusiasm of his followers, from less to more, much more.

With British punctuality, among a constellation of lights that enlarged his figure, Bunbury started with songs belonging to two albums published in 2020 and that, due to the pandemic, he had not had the opportunity to present (which did not prevent fans from singing the songs without missing a word),

their tenth and eleventh works, respectively, with a predominance of electronics, along with

and jazz rhythms as a signature and rock as the measure of all things.

Between song and song, the audience, Latin by a landslide, cheered him "Enrique, Enrique, Enrique", that way of calling the classics, only by their first name.

With

, belonging to the album

(2002), Bunbury looked back, alternating works published between that year and 2020, with no more order than the musical and poetic cohesion between them.

At times holding a guitar, when he approached

, from the album

(2004), the paroxysm had already been unleashed among the audience.

The emblematic

, also belonging to

, closed the panoramic review of his career like a loop, as if the body of the concert were a perfect circle.

Along with the prominence of the acoustic guitar and the synthesizers, with the musicians very supportive, the artist's fondness for the Latin was embodied in the presence of the percussion of the bongo drums.

, one of the successes of Heroes del Silencio, from 1990, was the concession to history.

Bunbury wasted energy in New York: he jumped into the stalls, mingled with his faithful and toured the stage tirelessly, always offering the profile of a classic.

The absolute dedication of more than 3,000 people summoned by her music had her reward.