Summer solstice with Maria Arnal: Lluna en Vers begins

Palma“I’m interested in concerts having a more scenic space, that music becomes a much broader spectacle”. Maria Arnal thus summarizes the philosophy of the live performances she proposes with AMA, her first solo work after closing the stage in 2022 with Marcel Bagés. The artist could also be describing the spirit of the new edition of La Lluna en Vers, the festival of the Fundació Mallorca Literària, which this year also bets on hybridization, research and different ways of understanding the relationship between music and words. This Saturday, June 20, she will present the album AMA in Mallorca. It will be a concert in Consolació, Sant Joan, and will inaugurate this summer's La Lluna en Vers festival. 

It will be precisely Arnal who will inaugurate the cycle on June 20 in Mallorca, at the Puig de Consolació in Sant Joan. She will do so with a proposal that comes after years of experimentation, making music for cinema and also for theatrical and dance performances. “The relationship I have had with choreographer Marcos Morau and La Veronal, a dance company he founded and directs, has been decisive”. The collaborations they have made, such as the revision of La mort i la primavera by Mercè Rodoreda with La Veronal, have “discovered another way of thinking about the stage: not only the movements, but also the objects, the materials, the colors, and the construction of a personal visual universe. From this learning is born a live performance in which dance is not a complement, but another language of the artistic proposal”.

Therefore, in the live performance of AMA Maria Arnal is accompanied by musicians and dancers. Finally, the choreographies are by the Catalan dancer Ariadna Montfort and the dance team includes the Mallorcan Laura Lliteras. Lighting is another very important element of the live performance, as Arnal explains. And there's more: AI also participates in this show. Thanks to a European grant developed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Arnal has worked with digital replicas of her voice, which are “new digitally generated vocal instruments”. In the live performance, “the dancers activate these sounds using bracelets that incorporate the technological dimension into the show”. Everything has been integrated into the live performance of the album “in a very organic way,” she points out, and the intention is for the proposal to offer an “emotional experience” to the audience.

This way of working through collaboration is, in fact, one of the project's main pillars: “Musicians, dancers, lighting, technology, and ancient instruments, like the organ, coexist in a proposal that seeks to connect seemingly distant worlds, but they are the worlds that interest me, my current obsessions. For me, music is the space that allows all these universes to unite,” he summarizes.

The poster

This will be the show that on Saturday, June 20, will kick off the festival, which this year will run until September 4. La Lluna en Vers will unfold a program throughout Mallorca that also defies labels and borders. Thus, other proposals on the bill also draw from the dialogue between musical and cultural heritage and technological innovation, as in the case of Gregotechno's project (August 7 in Consolació, in Sant Joan), which combines the ancient tradition of Gregorian chant with contemporary electronic music, a bet with reverberations and new meanings of the liturgy. Also part of the bill are Tarta Relena (August 31 at Casa Llorenç Villalonga, in Binissalem), with their journey of tragic meaning through the Mediterranean people, Georgian laments, and the mystical works of the visionary Hildegard of Bingen from the 12th century; and Magalí Sare (August 10 in the patio of the Orange Trees, in Lloret), who in Descasada investigates the farewell songs of brides and the role of marriage in women's lives, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Mediterranean, Europe, and South America. Completing the musical proposals are Ferran Palau (June 27, at Casa Llorenç Villalonga), Andreu Valor (July 3, at Casa Blai Bonet, in Santanyí), Paco Pecado (August 7, in Consolació, in Sant Joan), Mazoni (August 21, at Casa Blai Bonet), and Karmento (August 29, at Puig de Sant Miquel, in Montuïri).

Poetry takes over La Lluna en Vers

It is common for poetic word to have a prominent role within La Lluna en Vers, and this year, Blai Bonet will be especially present. The homage to the centenary of his birth will arrive with Una veu plena de nius, a show in which Mercè Sampietro, Sílvia Bel, Toni Gomila and Jaume Madaula will give voice to a writing full of images, intuitions and contradictions. The reading of the texts will dialogue with the music of Mar Grimalt and Carles Medina, further expanding the expressive possibilities of the Santanyí poet's work. It can be seen on July 18 in the patio of the Dones de la Misericòrdia in Palma and the following day, at the Casa Museu Blai Bonet in Santanyí.

The program will also vindicate the poet Shakespeare with Venus and Adonis, the narrative poem that consolidated the literary prestige of the English author beyond the stages. Emma Vilarasau and Jordi Bosch star in this proposal, with musical script by Lluís Claret, which recovers a text full of sensuality, humor and rhetorical refinement. The show will arrive on August 13 in Colonia de Sant Pere and on the 14th in the garden of the Casa Llorenç Villalonga in Binissalem.

The festival will conclude on September 4 with Sum vermis, by Ferran Dordal and Albert Prat, a contemporary approach to Jacint Verdaguer that shuns the folklorized gaze and emphasizes the more critical, disenchanted and uncomfortable poet. A reading that confirms the common thread of this entire edition: the will to revisit cultural legacies and explore new languages without renouncing either emotion or word.