·

CURRENT PROJECTS > No Crec En Tu

JOSEP-MARIA BALANYÀ composition, musical direction, piano performance, set design.
ODILE ARQUÉ voice, scenic interpretation.
The idea, textual composition and advice on the script are by Víctor Sunyol.

No Crec en tu (I do not believe in you) is a performance, a reading-concert based on the “Cant Espiritual" (Spiritual Song) by Josep Palau i Fabre and the links he has to the two other great spiritual songs preceding him in time, Ausiàs March’s and Joan Maragall’s. The “Cant Espiritual" is a genre in Catalan poetry. D. Sam Abrams, literary critic, defines it as "a sub-genre within religious poetry consisting of a dramatic monologue in the first person singular, directed, in a formal or informal way, to the Creator, or to Christ, or both, of grave tone and of great sincerity and authenticity, animated in the background by a dispute or dilemma and formulated through a unique poetical-lyric text, of great emotional intensity, written in verses of the grand or lesser styles, rhymed or not, that works on three levels (prayer, confession and interpellation), with conceptual contagions of philosophical language." In the Spiritual Song there will always be a burden of dispute, controversy, discussion with God. Ausiàs March, the great poet who lived between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, founds the genre with a long poem (224 verses, not rhymed) which, according to Professor Ramírez Molas, "is an intimate examination, it is a prayer and is framed in philosophical or religious reflections of a general nature.” In it, the poet addresses God expressing his doubt in faith (in the middle of the fifteenth century), his will to follow the straight path and his fears. After March, other Catalan poets have written their Spiritual Song, among them those by Joan Maragall, a poem that sets out the characteristics of the genre, and by Josep Palau i Fabre. The coincidences and divergences between the three texts are manifested by taking the poem of Palau i Fabre as a thread and comparing them to fragments of those of March and Maragall, dealing with them as the contemporaries they are. The correspondences, echoes, contradictions, similarities between the three poems and the three poets create a unique and original text, in which the essence of the “Cant Espiritual” genre manifests itself with all its doubts, its cruelty, its emotion, its tensions, its hope and its inherent lyrical force. It is not a simple recitation of poems with accompaniment or a show with filler. In reality, what stands out is nakedness. A genre such as the spiritual song, where poetry invokes divinity, can only be revealed in live performance. Thus, based on the text of Víctor Sunyol, in which the three poets focus their doubts and beliefs in what becomes a single prayer, Balanyà creates a cosmos that is materialized in a powerful piano and extended piano ritual (non-conventional technique of playing the instrument, including percussive techniques) that pushes with contemporary force the timeless texts that resonate in the power of the voice and the scenic interpretation of Odile Arqué. Odile and Balanyà dialogue with each other and complement their languages and messages, becoming accomplices and inseparable. Undoubtedly, when Palau i Fabre wrote his "Cant espiritual" he had in mind the Cantos de Maragall (a poet he loved and a poem that he knew by heart and recited admirably) and that of Ausiàs March, another of the poets he took as a model and to whom he dedicated some indispensable pages. Obviously, Palau's “Cant Espiritual" does not follow either of these two poems; Palau follows his own path. But it is also obvious - and inevitable - that there are many points of contact, both formally and conceptually, either to coincide or to go in different directions. 

Video

  • The career of the Catalan pianist Josep-Maria Balanyà, born in Barcelona, with more than 40 years on stage, 27 albums recorded and more than 140 works, has taken him from classical music and jazz to his specialisation into the field of improvisation and new contemporary music, experimental music and performance. Internationally recognised, Balanyà is also composer, conductor of improvising orchestras, sound artist, painter and photographer.

    Josep-Maria Balanyà explores the limits of music in his compositions and performances. He is particularly interested in the combination of different arts and the transfer of art into music. In order to expand and deepen his preoccupation with the fine arts and also with the craft material, he attended courses in painting and etching at the European Academy of Fine Arts in Trier (Europäische Kunstakademie Trier) / Germany.

    Under the auspices and organization of the head of the Academy, Dr. Gabriele Lohberg, Balanyà performed for many years a series of interactive concert-performances in the Kunsthalle of the Academy, where fine arts were combined with music and performance. Here he experimented with the interaction between the sounds that arise when working on copper etching plates and the artistic result. He worked with the metal workshop that made or provided sculptures for musical performances. The works are now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Tarragona. In a teaching assignment for the students of the European Art Academy, he devoted himself to the music images of contemporary compositions and suggested using them as a basis for further musically interpretable drawings. In performative concerts, he not only made musical instruments sound, but - with electronic amplification and alienation - sculptures (Pierre Wéber), paintings (class Joe Allen), bodies (models from the art academy) and objets trouvés as well.

    As part of these projects, Balanyà even gave a concert of bells in the cathedral of Trier.

    Mainly, his own art production focuses on abstract paintings in which he uses mixed media, but especially acrylic on canvas. His work can be seen in his private gallery in Brussels and in buyers' homes. In addition, he has studied photography and practiced this art since adolescence. His work has followed a process ranging from pictorialism, to direct photography, street photography, macro technique and the study of the human body. He is currently preparing several exhibitions in which he presents a series of impressionist-style photos with movement; this technique gives an abstract pictorial result.

    As for his main field, music, Balanyà studied in Barcelona and Switzerland (Swiss Jazz School and Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Bern), he attended composition workshops, led by Helmut Lachenmann, Walter Zimmermann and Ivan Fedele, and improvisation workshops by Borah Bergman in New York. He carried out intensive research into the sounds of nature in Mexico, working with oceanographers and biologists, including mammalogist Bernardo Villa.

    Most of his works have a significant amount of improvisation. His work as a solo pianist combines the pure sound of the instrument with prepared or manipulated piano techniques. He has presented various multimedia projects for piano, voice, live electronics, video, Butoh dance, as well as percussion pieces on sculptures, sound objects and fine arts tools. He has created sculptures and sound installations that can be played by the public. He has developed his most imaginative actions at the boundary between music and performance, such as a recital in complete darkness at the Sendesaal of Bremen (Germany).

    He has played with first-rate musicians including Claudio Pontiggia, Hans Koch, Joachim Kühn, Franz Hautzinger, Carlos Zingaro, Michiel Borstlap, Walter Quintus, Ksenija Lukic, Hannah Marshall, Das Neue Ensemble Hannover, Americo Rodrigues, Ramón López, Paul Rogers, Mark Sanders, Hannah Ma (dance), Mimi Barthélemy, among others.

    Balanyà has played in festivals and radio programs in many countries in Europe and America. He has received several grants in Germany (Worpswede, Eckernförde, Düsseldorf) and Switzerland (Fondazione Arp). He is currently based in Brussels and in Barcelona.

    The concerts by Balanyà are powerful ​rituals –​ it could be said that he plays the piano with his whole body – during which ​we can perceive the presence of music change into matter.

  • Born in Badalona (Barcelona). She lives deep into words. She writes as a water diviner who pulls out water from the well, she recites for the joy of concelebrating poetry and sings for the pleasure of vibration. She is also a translator with the aim of understanding the subterranean beat of other languages. Her published poetry books are Expiatòria (on original engravings by Jaume Ribas. Ferrer Ed. 1984), Epístola en Sol Major (La Gent del Llamp, 1986. Antoni Isern Prize 1984), La vida en punt (Pont del Petroli, 2012). She has been included in several poetry collected works as Price & Cia. (Pont del Petroli, 2011), Taller BDN 10 years of sculpture (taller BDN, 2015), Lents velers etimològics, Catalan and Québecois Poets (Anada i Tornada 5. Café Central, 2015) . We can find narrative works of Odile Arqué  in Punt i Seguit (La Gent del Llamp, 1991), Badalones (Proa, 2004), La mirada del Po (Nit Literària, 2004), Poemes amatoris baetulans, Els textos de la Domus Alba (Pont del Petroli, 2011).
    In 2014, the painter Lluïsa Pla, after catching on the fly several spontaneous notes written by Odile Arqué in the social network, she creates the exhibition M’ho diuen els versos. She has translated, among other works, Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s fan: El ventall de Lady Windermere (La Gent del Llamp, 1995), numerous film scripts for dubbing purposes, and has translated and adapted for singing some operas as The Little Sweep, by Benjamin Britten, Ahmal and the night visitors, by Gian Carlo Menotti, and Brundibar, by Hans Krása. She has collaborated in the translation of the poetry book Tête première Dos contra dos, by the Québecois poet Martine Audet. In 2015 and 2016 she was invited to participate in Programa Anada i Tornada - poetes catalans i quebequesos (Catalan and Québecois poets). She has been translated into Spanish, English and French.