The Toca’m festival, in Tortosa, wants to take advantage of everything that a piano can give, which in its second edition – it started in 2019 as a music day, but the success led to expansion – hotel to the Barcelona pianist Alba Ventura taking over the inaugural concert, which will take place on Friday the 5th (8 p.m.), in the reformed Plaça de l’Absis de la Catedral, one of the places recovered for the city overlooking the River. It is titled Per a Alicia and is part of the Alicia de Larrocha year, which celebrates her centenary.
Emblematic pieces from the repertoire of the iconic pianist will be played, as well as contemporary Catalan composers who wrote for her virtuoso hands. Ventura will interpret them following the original annotations that remain in De Larrocha’s scores. The daughter of the prestigious artist, AlÃcia Torra, will talk about her more personal side, and will also inaugurate the exhibition on her life that can be seen at the Marcel·là Domingo Library.
Other corners of the two-thousand-year-old city will host the Toca’m performances from Friday 5, a name that recalls the initiative of the Maria Canals International Competition to bring grand pianos to the streets of Barcelona for any fan to get excited. But the festival in the capital of Baix Ebre expands the concept and embraces from purely artistic and professional manifestations to activities to bring the piano closer to hospitals, geriatric homes and schools. Or to also put him in contact with dance or plastic arts… or put him on a tricycle to take him around the terraces of bars and restaurants.
From the river jetty at Pont Roig, from the Jardins del PrÃncep to the redesigned Carrer Cervantes, which has become a new promenade, or from the Sant Jaume and Sant Maties or Sant Jordi and Sant Domènec schools , in Plaça d’Espanya or the Museum of Tortosa, the Market or Teodor Gonzà lez Park… Pianos will invade the city with classical, jazz, flamenco, pop or contemporary music.
Carles Marigó will perform his Breaking Bach that was so successful at the Bachcelona festival a couple of summers ago. The pianist and composer from Blanes approaches Bach as a performance, looking at him as a living being, permeable to electronics, hip-hop, jazz or flamenco. And people from outside are invited, like the Moroccan-Berlin Amine Mesnoaui, who links in a minimalist way the Andalusian tradition of the 14th and 15th centuries with songs from the early 20th century and more modern Moroccan composers. Or Costa Rican pianist and singer-songwriter Sofi Paez, who is also based in Berlin and investigates her sound inspired by nature.
Musicians trained at the higher music schools of Barcelona participate, such as Jaume Vilaseca, who presents his 9th album Jazz
There are about twenty concerts from the 5th to the 7th conceived and organized by Maria Lombarte and Manel Miró, of the Cor Labinota Association, together with the Tortosa City Council, and with a team of people and an extensive group of volunteers “without whom the Festival could not be carried out”, they say. And also: “We want to highlight the city of Tortosa, create an important artistic and cultural atmosphere and enhance its heritage and its important musical and artistic history, led by the musician, composer and master of the great masters Felip Pedrell, whose the city keeps its piano”.
