Tell me about project Grup21
Grup21 is an ensemble dedicated to performing new music by Catalan and Spanish composers, as well as international composers. I started the group with colleagues in 2002. It is a Catalan group. We are based here and we all live here. Most of the performers are Catalan and originally from Barcelona, but the group is composed of Catalan, American, Irish, German, Polish, and other musicians. Music cuts across borders and different languages by definition. The objectives of Grup21 are to cultivate and introduce Catalan and international composers to the Barcelona audiences, and to project Catalan music and Catalan music making beyond our borders. That is what we are doing.
How important is it to you to work with musicians/composers from all over the world and do you deem 'place' as an essential motif in composing?
It is essential to work with musicians and composers from around the world. It is like letting the winds blow fresh air into us and it allows us to blow some of our fresh air out into the world. It is an important step in the growth and learning process for composers, performers and audiences to be able to hear music written by and performed by musicians from other countries and cultures, just as it is for music from Barcelona to be heard and appreciated across the ocean in America or up north in Finland, for example. This has always been the case with music since the days of the troubadours.
Of course, the place where you live conditions you to a great degree when you compose. Two examples of that for me are the Magnificat and the Missa Brevis that I was commissioned to write for Cor Vivaldi of Barcelona. It would be hard for me to imagine receiving these same commissions in the US. That came about in part because of the special choral tradition in Catalunya as well as the Catholic tradition here. Writing those two pieces were wonderful opportunities. Another was the commission that I received to write for the Cobla Sant Jordi, one of the best coblas [group that plays traditional Catalan music, especially to accompany sardana dances] there is in the world. Obviously, writing for the Catalan cobla is an opportunity that only exists here. Also, over the years one absorbs more and more of the musical traditions of the country. It takes time, but the process is inevitable.
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