Julio Iglesias once again won the heart of Panama with his unforgettable hits February 7, 2014

Julio Iglesias once again won the heart of Panama with his unforgettable hits

February 7, 2014

By: Otilia Ríos, Diario La Estrella
On the 5th of February, Julio Iglesias was responsible for a special night in Panama. The warm and gentle summer breeze colluded with the public to create a romantic, special encounter with the singer who, boasting an artistic career of more than 45 years, surrendered himself to an audience that proved willing to sing his unforgettable hits with him.

The Spanish artist opened with his emblematic ‘Amor, amor, amor’, which was enough for his fans to ready themselves to relive his most special moments. This was followed by hits, such as ‘La gota fría’, ‘Échame a mí la culpa’, ‘A media luz’, ‘Me olvidé de vivir’, tangos and a seductive ‘Mammy Blue’ and ‘Careless Whisper’, which delighted everyone, as the artist also sang in English and French.

It is love and an abundance of memories that cause followers throughout the world to chant the songs of Julio Iglesias.

CONFESSIONS

The recipient of two Guinness Records for the highest number of records sold in the largest number of languages throughout history ‘confessed’ to his audience that they should not believe everything they hear about him, although it might be true. There is only 5% of truth, his truth, that belongs to him and which he safeguards like an intimate secret.

He also demonstrated his fine sense of humour and great charisma. ‘I love Panama, I know it well.’ Moreover, he was bold enough to make a special request, such as those reserved for people who love one another: ‘Look after me’, to which his faithful audience responded with applause and cries of affection.

It cannot be denied that Julio Iglesias came to give his all on the stage, whispering phrases from this love songs and speaking of happy times. Now ‘I live more for you… you have given me so much time’ he repeated to the audience, made up of couples of all ages.Everything was marvellous from beginning to end.

Julio Iglesias, Latin lion in winter, sings Saturday at AmericanAirlines Arena

February 18, 2014

By: Jordan Levin, Miami Herald
Julio Iglesias spends much of his time in the air these days, crisscrossing the globe in his private plane to sing in concerts from Singapore to Transylvania. But for the several months of the year he is at his home in Indian Creek, an exclusive island enclave just off Surfside, his circle is much smaller.

“I live a very secluded life,” says the 70-year old legend, buzzing the island’s single road in an electric golf cart. “I don’t go to parties for the last 20 years. I don’t go to the Grammys. I don’t go anywhere. They invite me, I don’t go. I don’t have anything to say except when I am singing.
For millions of fans from China to Chile, Arizona to Israel, Julio Iglesias still embodies the Latin crooner, the suave seducer, the romantic fantasy. For Latinos, he was the man men wanted to be and women dreamed of being with. He is a global icon who has sung and recorded in more languages than any other artist, crossing over before crossover was a concept.
Iglesias’ move from his native Spain to Miami in 1979 helped give the city an aura of international glamour, and was instrumental to its becoming the capital of Latin music and entertainment. Though his latest album, 1, which reprises his many hits, sold a very respectable but not earth-shattering million copies, Guinness World Records last year decreed that his 300 million sales of 80 albums made him the best-selling male Latin artist of all time.
The power of his image lingers even as he roams farther for concert bookings in smaller venues that, he says, often don’t cover the cost of his private plane and entourage.
“I travel with 40 people from Finland to China,” he says. “It costs me the same money that I make, because I don’t put 25,000 people together anymore. But for me to sing gives me a feeling that . . . makes my blood run much stronger in my body. I look in the mirror every day. Without singing, I would not look in the mirror.”
He buzzes past the medium-size mansion he shares with his wife, Miranda Rijnsburger, a former Dutch model 23 years his junior, and their five children, Michael, 16; Rodrigo, 14; golden-haired twins Victoria and Cristina, 12; and Guillermo, 6. (“He is the only one in the family who thinks I am young,” Iglesias said earlier, sitting in their living room and patting his youngest boy’s back affectionately. “He comes from heaven, this guy.”)
Their mother, slim and deftly graceful in white jeans and flowing beige cardigan, explains that the family used to spend most of the time at the Iglesias estate in the Dominican Republic, or traveling the globe with their patriarch. But as the children grew older they craved school friends, not private tutors, and they now live most of the year in Miami, where they attend private school.
Iglesias guides the golf cart to an enormous, immaculately landscaped lot that could hold several mansions, the site of his first home on the island. He tore it down in 2008, when he didn’t get his asking price of $25 million. He might rebuild, he says, if he has time.
PARALYSIS
For now, it is a small, private park on a private island, where Guillermo is playing soccer with his mother. The boy is defending a practice net, shrieking with delight as he kicks the ball into the dusk. When Iglesias was 19, he, too, was a goalie — for Spain’s famed Real Madrid soccer team, until a car accident left him paralyzed. He spent three years learning to walk and talk again and, to help him regain use of his hands, to play guitar, and finally, to sing. “I learned to go to the end,” he says. “I am a champion because I am a survivor.”
Half a century later, that determination drove Iglesias to shed the indulgences he enjoyed for so long. “I love to eat, I love to drink — I bought the best wines. But I cannot eat so much, I cannot drink so much now,” he says. “At 70 years old the stage demands absolute discipline. If I don’t rest, I don’t sing. If I don’t take care of myself, I don’t sing. Before I took everything for granted. Now I take nothing for granted.”
He contemplates the sun glowing orange-pink between a lattice of palm fronds and on the glimmering surface of the Intracoastal Waterway. “I have been watching this for the last 35 years,” he says. “I will continue watching this until I die, maybe.”
Guillermo’s shouts turn to wails as the sky darkens and his mother urges him home. “He doesn’t want to leave,” Iglesias says, with a hint of a smile.
There’s a flash of his fabled seductiveness. “In two hours you cannot discover my life,” he tells the journalist interviewing him. “To discover me you would have to sleep with me for six months, darling.”
THE LADIES’ MAN
But he dismisses tales of his sexual voraciousness, including tales that he once needed two women a day.
“Let me tell you that story, because it’s very funny,” he says. He was in London in the 1970s, in the midst of a sold-out run of 10 concerts – or was it 12? – when his manager came to the hotel with a newspaper interview in which Iglesias had boasted that he’d slept with 3,000 women.
“After five minutes he says, ‘I think it’s a great promotion.’ So when they ask me about that now, so many times, I say, ‘Oh, that was in 1975. Now it’s like a million!’ ”
However many there were, Rijnsburger has outlasted them all. He met her in an airport in Jakarta, where he invited her to one of his concerts.
“She had a boyfriend, naturally — she was beautiful,” Iglesias says. “Maybe I was no better than the boyfriend.”
He was with her for 20 years, sending out Christmas cards with glossy pictures of their expanding clan, before he married her in 2010.
“If I did not feel the freedom to be independent, I would not get together with anyone,” he says. “She understands that, and so we are a marriage forever. . . . She is my love, my companion. I don’t understand my life without her.”
IDOL MUSINGS
Iglesias, who launched his career by winning a Spanish song contest in 1968, says he would never make it in the era of American Idol.
“Not just me, but Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, would never make it today,” he says. “Everybody looks the same, everybody acts the same, the same gimmick, the same dance. Everybody sings better than we sang. But there is a vulnerability that makes you much more attractive than people who have everything.”
Among those contemporary stars is his son Enrique, 38, the youngest of three children from his 1971 marriage to Philippine socialite Isabel Preysler, who grew up on Indian Creek during Iglesias’ jet-setting prime. Enrique’s first album was dedicated to his nanny, and father and son have been dogged by rumors of competition and estrangement.
Iglesias admits that Enrique might have had reason to feel neglected.
“I feel a little guilty when I talk about this subject,” he says. “It’s true, maybe, I was not as good a father as I am now.”
Iglesias says he loves and is proud of the only one of his children to follow his career, but adds that he talks to Enrique, who lives in Miami, only two or three times a year.
“We are not compatible,” he says. “He has an extraordinary, deep life and I have another.”
He describes their separate paths as “the perfect relationship between a father and son who live in the ocean of life, and when they get to port they say, ‘Hello, how was your trip? Good, father, good. How was your trip Papi? Good, good trip. Are you happy? Yes, I’m happy. Let’s see each other on the next trip.’ ”
THE REAL WORLD
Iglesias’ trip continues, endlessly, it seems, and to ever more corners of the earth. In 2011 he helped the king and queen of Malaysia inaugurate a mall in Kuala Lumpur and played a New Year’s Eve concert in Georgia — not the state, but the country that was part of the former Soviet Union. Last year he received awards for being the first and most popular international artist in China.
His travels do not extend to the virtual world, however — he admits that he knows nothing about social media or the Internet. “I don’t follow anything,” he says. “I don’t know how to go inside the Internet.”
Except to check the weather as he prepares to cross the Pacific again. And while he admiringly mentions artists like Bruno Mars and Beyoncé, he doesn’t try to keep up with pop music.
“I don’t have time anymore,” he says. “They ask me sometimes, ‘Julio, why don’t you drink young wines?’ Funny question, because I bought good wines in the ’70s, now they are perfect, great wines you bought for $20 or $30 today are a fortune. I don’t have time to drink the old ones. How am I going to drink the young ones? Music is quite the same.”

JULIO IGLESIAS at finest triumphs in his „homecoming” in Miami

February 23, 2014

By: Emilio J. López, EFE
Energetic ovations, cries and all nature of complements summarise the devotion of the public towards Julio Iglesias when he once again took to the stage in Miami, USA, where he triumphed on Saturday night with songs spanning his entire career and the support of a carefully configured sound system.

At the age of seventy, the singer maintains the demeanour of a top-class artist who is aware that success is founded on stripping his relationship with his audience of all histrionics and on a single mandate: provoking fascination.
Committed to that style and inspiration that are very much his own, where a single stool to lean on to perform beautiful songs such as „Caruso” or „El amor” and the phrasing of his voice are enough, he gave free rein to anecdotes and witty comments that were received with smiles of complicity throughout the auditorium.

„I often ask myself what is it that an artist likes most. What we like most is coming back. To be in Miami is a privilege for me, it is a privilege that you still want me”, Spain’s most universal singer stated, by way of presentation, to the audience that filled the American Airlines Arena and chanted the lyrics of the songs without tiring.

During the stop in Miami within his intense world tour, Julio Iglesias performed songs, such as „Manuela”, „Me olvidé de vivir”, „Un canto a Galicia” or „Abrázame”, that form a part of the emotional fabric of several generations and, with his expressive voice, at times reduced to a whisper, at times visceral, he tugged at the heart strings of his audience.

„If I didn’t maintain the passion that you give to me, I would be in a law firm”, the artist quipped before performing „Hey”, which the public sang from beginning to end, marking the high point of a soirée that lasted for over two hours, wherein he performed around thirty songs.

He spoke highly emotive words of affection to his wife, Miranda, who was present with the five children they share, dedicating to her the song „Ne me quitte pas” by the French singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, „the greatest poet in the history of pop music”, he affirmed.

„Next to you, my life’s greatest love has been my wife. She has become the wind in my sails and that is why I would like to dedicate this song to her”, the singer stated, his words provoking applause and heartfelt comments amongst the public.

„De niña a mujer” and „La carretera” were followed by „Quijote”, one of songs that garnered the greatest applause in the venue during the night, where the singer showed that the neither the more than 300 million records he has sold, nor the endless journey from country to country singing have reduced his ability to captivate, or his boundless energy and unyielding commitment to his public.

After performing „A media luz”, accompanied on stage by two extraordinary tango dancers that the artist has been bringing on tour with him for years, Julio Iglesias joked with the audience: „Tonight, when you go back to your homes, if you are able to dance the tango like Soledad and Hernán, tomorrow you’ll go to the gynaecologist.

Previously, exuding his customary warmth, he asked what nationalities were present in the auditorium in several languages, going on to add, with a great deal of humour, that „I wasn’t aware that I was singing in the United Nations tonight”.

The display of lights, the images projected on to the backdrop accompanying each song and the impeccable sound system were noteworthy aspects of the concert.

Faithful to the hallmarks that define his identity, raising his fists in the air, he bade farewell to the audience in Miami, who stood, applauding with complete devotion whilst they chanted „Me va, me va”, providing the perfect end to the concert.

He was forced to return to the stage in view of the public’s endless applause and cries of „one more, one more” and „Julio, don’t leave” to perform one encore after another with admirable energy.

Artculo
Competition: Win Julio Iglesias’ latest album as he announces London tour dates

April 9, 2014

By: Aurora Ciccioli, Click Liverpool
Julio Iglesias is the best-selling Latin Artist in history and the hotly anticipated release of his new album – ‘1 The Collection’ (Sony Music) will consist of Julio’s passionate love ballads – with some songs re-mastered.

The living legend had sold over 300 million records around the world in his career, among his awards are: Grammys, the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts and the Isabella the Catholic Award (both in Spain), the French Legion of Honor, ASCAP, AMA, and the Chinese Golden Record for having sold more albums in China than any other foreign musician.

He’s received over 2600 gold and platinum records, was the United Nations representative for the Arts for 15 years, his star has been on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 1985 and his name is entered twice in the Guinness Book of Records, for having sold more albums in different languages than any other Artist and the biggest selling Latin artist in the world.

Begin the Beguine, Crazy and When I Need You – plus a duet with Frank Sinatra on Summer Wind – to name a few of the 18 tracks on the album. A hit collection not to be missed!

Album release date: 19th May.

Tracklisting:
1. Begin the Beguine (Volver A Empezar) (Remastered Version)
2. Crazy (Remastered Version)
3. When I Need You (Remastered Version)
4. Vincent (Starry Night) (Remastered Version)
5. 99 Miles From L.A.
6. And I Love Her
7. Always On My Mind
8. Crazy In Love (Remastered Version)
9. Fragile (feat. Sting) (Remastered Version)
10. Caruso (feat. Lucio Dalla) (Remastered Version)
11. To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before (Remastered Version)
12. All Of You (Remastered Version)
13. My Love (Duet With Stevie Wonder) (Remastered Version)
14. When You Tell Me That You Love Me (Duet With Dolly Parton)
15. Summer Wind (Duet With Frank Sinatra)
16. Let It Be Me (feat. Art Garfunkel)
17. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (duet with All-4-One)
18. As Time Goes By (From The Motion Picture „Casablanca”) (Live Version)

Julio will be coming to the UK to play two dates at the Royal Albert Hall, London on May 13th and May 19th. Tickets on sale now!

And Click Liverpool is offering 3 lucky readers the chance to win a copy of the album. Simply answer the following question…

Which country was Julio Iglesias born in?

Email your answer to competitions@clickliverpool.com along with your name, age, address and phone number. Competition will close at 9am on 21st April. You must be 16 or over to enter.
2014 Spring Gala at Strathmore: Julio Iglesias
April 27, 2014
By: Eliza Anna Falk, DC Metro Theater Arts

Last might was a special night at the Strathmore for Julio Iglesias and his local fans. “We get to present one of the most successful recording artists, and at the same time we are here to raise money to support our arts education programs and outreach,” said Shelley Brown, Strathmore’s VP for Programming and Artistic Director for Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc. “It is a win-win for Strathmore and for Iglesias” because the entertainer’s passion is helping children and giving them hope.

As the lights are dimming, the elegantly dressed attendees are eagerly awaiting Julio Iglesias’ concert after partaking in a pre-concert charity dinner. It is past 9pm. I check out the orchestra – three guitars, keyboard, percussion, and conga drums. The musicians are ready, so are the three gorgeous backup singers standing behind the microphones. The spotlights are on, ready to start dancing and teasing with their patterns and colors. The impatient audience starts clapping. I too twist in my seat restlessly, wondering if the 70 year old’s voice is still wonderful. Julio was never a ‘born singer’ and has always been modest about his talent, recently crediting “good timing, good luck, little talent and a lot of passion, drive and discipline” for his astounding success. He also said that his goal was for “people to know that I sing better” and not wanting to hide his voice behind an orchestra in 20 years’ time. “I want to do it myself” he added, diffusing any possible rumors of retirement (US edition Huffington Post interview on 4/9/13).

Another burst of impatient clapping and the biggest selling Latin artist in history enters the stage greeted with noisy accolades. The music starts, the girls start moving their hips seductively. Julio lifts the microphone to his lips and… “Amor, Amor, Amor,” he sings, making the crowd go crazy. His unique mesmerizing voice instantly fills the air with magic. My doubts evaporate in a second. He still has it, BIG time. Not only the voice – the suave, the charm, the classy cheekiness of a ‘pop music archetypal Latin lover’ are still there, judging from the way he interacts with his beautiful and talented support singers. His confidence and wit soon become apparent. “Latinos get pregnant easily because of the combination of the romantic music and dance affecting the body,” he jokes as a prelude to Tango, which comes to life with double force, supported by dazzling moves of Argentinian dancers who take the stage, red lights dancing around them. I am mesmerized, just like the rest of the audience, which surprisingly is not female dominated. After promising to sing in English later on, he continues to woo us in Spanish, Italian, and French, paying tribute to Luciano Pavarotti and Jacques Revaux. Language barriers are not an issue. When his voice’s trademark velvety tones effortlessly caresses the strings of his Latin romantic soul, hearts melt and souls fill with longing. Such is the universal appeal of Julio Iglesias’ passion and talent.

Following amazing renditions of Crazy and Careless Whispers, the artist talks about his will to keep performing. “I sing to survive mentally and physically,, he says and delights the audience with “Me Va Me Va,” generating a standing ovation. The star has been unstoppable with 60 million fans, 5,000 concerts in 600 cities to date and 2,600 gold and platinum records to his credit. His current tour commenced on April i10th at Carnegie Hall in New York and will conclude in Marbella, Spain on August 13th after visiting numerous US, European and Canadian locations and launching his latest album Numero Uno in the UK. Honored with special awards by his native Spain, as well as France and China, Iglesias is also a UNICEF Special Ambassador for the Performing Arts and an owner of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is the only Guinness Book of Records Diamond Disc recipient, not to mention a Grammy Award, American Music Award and the highest award of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The crooner is not afraid to lose it: “I will have the voice until I die. I just don’t know if I will have the body.” As long as his passion for music lives on and there are 100 or even 10 people eager to listen, he says, he will be content. “I am singing because I love it when people say to me ‘thank you’. I thank them. It is a marriage” (UK edition Huffington Post interview 9/10/12).

The audience refuses to let their idol go, enticing him back to sing along to “Always on My Mind.” His last song of the evening is a Spanish version of Sinatra’s “My Way.” How pertinent. Julio Iglesias intends on doing it his way for a long time to come. When asked in last Friday’s interview with the El Tiempo Latino about his intention to write his memoirs, Julio responded “As far as my life is concerned, I have not written anything down. I am still a child.”

2014 Spring Gala at Strathmore: Julio Iglesias played Saturday, April 26, 2014 at The Music Center at Strathmore – 5301 Tuckerman Lane, in North Bethesda, MD. Check their Events and Tickets Calendar for future performances.

JULIO IGLESIAS, THE MOST SUCCESSFUL LATIN ARTIST OF ALL TIME

May 12, 2014

London, Monday 12 May 2014: One of the ten biggest selling artists in the world, Julio Iglesias was today presented with a unique award by Sony Music to celebrate his status as The Most Successful Latin Artist of All Time at a press conference in front of the world’s media at The Dorchester Hotel, London.

The award, in recognition of sales of over 300 million records, was presented by Doug Morris, CEO Sony Music, Edgar Berger, Chairman & CEO, Sony Music International, and Afo Verde, Chairman & CEO Sony Music Latin Iberia. The presentation took place ahead of two performances by Julio Iglesias at the Royal Albert Hall, the London venue where he first appeared over 30 years ago in 1982.

Julio Iglesias said, “I’m so glad to be receiving this award, and especially in London, a place that has so many memories for me, where I’m surrounded by so many friends. I would like to take this opportunity and say a big thank you to all the people who have bought my albums over the years, as well as to all those who have come to see me in concert. They made this award possible. Although I admit that the most important prize I´ve ever got is people´s love.”

Doug Morris, CEO, Sony Music, said: “Dear Julio, without question you are one of the most beloved and successful recording artists of all time. You are a talent like no other who continues to thrill fans around the world. I couldn’t think of a worthier recipient for this special award.”

Julio Iglesias, the legendary singer The Guardian called “a master of silver-tongued charm” when he last performed in Britain in 2003, belongs to an elite of international superstars whose popularity transcends frontiers and cultural barriers. Indeed, he is the only vocalist to sing in 14 languages, ranging from his native Spanish and other romantic languages including French, Italian and Portuguese, but also spanning German and English as well as Japanese, Indonesian and Tagalog. The Guinness Book Of World Records recognized this unique achievement and acknowledged his status as the best-selling Latin male artist in the world with a special award presented to him in China last year.

By the time he topped the UK and Irish charts with his sublime adaptation of the Cole Porter standard Begin The Beguine (Volver A Embezar) in 1981, Julio Iglesias had been singing professionally for 13 years. In 1970, he represented Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest in Amsterdam with the self-penned ballad Gwendolyne, an ode to the French girl he met when he was keeping goal for Real Madrid’s reserve team, before the dreadful car crash that put an end to his football career in 1963. Given a guitar by a nurse while recovering in hospital, he began writing songs but spent three months studying English in Cambridge and completed a law degree before launching his career in Spain. Following unparalleled success throughout continental Europe, South America and Japan, he triumphed at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden in the mid-seventies and subsequently moved his base of operation to Miami.

In the early eighties, Julio Iglesias became a truly global phenomenon with hits like Quiereme Mucho (Love Me A Lot), Amor and Hey!. In 1982, he sold out fourteen concerts in Las Vegas and followed this the next year with five nights at the Royal Albert Hall, the famed London venue he will return to this week. Over the years, he has recorded a succession of wonderful duets with Willie Nelson – the irresistible To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before – Diana Ross – the dreamy All Of You – Stevie Wonder – the wistful My Love – Frank Sinatra – a gorgeous arrangement of Summer Wind for Sinatra’s Duets album in 1993 – and Dolly Parton – the touching When You Tell Me That You Love Me. As well as a songwriter in his own right, he is a supreme interpreter of other people’s material, including Don McLean’s Vincent – on the 1990 album Starry Night – Crazy, the Willie Nelson composition previously associated with Patsy Cline, and Fragile, duetting with the song’s author Sting; both tracks were highlights of the 1994 Crazy album. In the nineties, he appeared as himself in both the sitcom Golden Girls and the soap opera General Hospital.

Julio Iglesias has remained a mainstay of the charts with the superlative studio albums La Carretera, Tango and Noche de Cuatro Lunas and the treasured compilations My Life: The Greatest Hits, Love Songs, and his most recent release, the appropriately-titled 1 The Collection. This album includes remastered versions of many of the aforementioned songs, as well as re-recordings of 99 Miles From L.A., And I Love Her, Always On My Mind, Caruso and As Time Goes By, from the motion picture Casablanca, that have long been staples of his repertoire. 1 The Collection also features a duet with the American vocal group All-4-One on another timeless classic, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

Julio Iglesias is truly is in a league of his own, an incomparable talent whose love songs have soundtracked the lives of hundreds of millions for over 45 years.