It was 2016 when the Kebyart saxophone quartet won the First Palau and paved the way for the Kambrass Quintet, which also emerged from Esmuc students, to give its first attempts. In less than a decade, Catalonia has become fertile land for rare chamber formations – or kamara, more groundbreaking – such as wind ensembles. An initiative created by students who, by offering something so different, have been forced to demonstrate in advance what they are capable of.
The Kambrass Quintet, who perfected themselves in Lucerne, where they had an academic training that was almost tailor-made and as innovative as they were, currently reside in Basel. Theirs is a different and renewed look at this type of outfit. And they will give an account of it this Saturday at L'Auditori (7 p.m.), in the marathon of the Emergents festival.
La Vanguardia meets them in the previous rehearsal, when they give instructions to the lighting director to give greater drama to Pilar Jurado's piece. Because the repertoire is versatile and rhythmically complex, with works by Witold Lutosławski, Victor Ewald, Enric Granados, Isaac Albéniz and the aforementioned Jurado.
Coming to the latter, which was composed for wind quintet, specifically for the Valencian Spanish Brass, Guillem Cardona (trumpet), Joan Pàmies (trumpet), Maria Servera (horn), Xavier Gil (trombone) and Oriol Reverter (tuba), all between 26 and 28 years old, take out the lecterns in the Oriol Martorell room. “It's not that it is impossible to learn it by heart, we have done more intricate works, but we would be too careful to remember it, which would go against the expression,” says Joan, while he picks up his instrument.
“The versatility that you can achieve with this group is enormous: from Renaissance music, which looks great with those instruments, or baroque, since everything that is for organ works for metal, to the first works of romanticism already composed for this group. , and the many original pieces from the 20th century and those that we have asked to be fixed or we have fixed ourselves,” adds Guillem. Without going any further, Catalunya, from Albéniz's Spanish Suite that they play today, is an arrangement of his. Well, unlike the string quartet, they do not have a vast repertoire. “We look for what might look good with our winds and we put ourselves in the shoes of the composer,” says Xavier.
The truth is that their adventure began “to have a good time, finish class and go together to drink beers.” Pablo Manuel Fernández, former OBC tubist and Esmuc professor, planted the seed. And María, from Mallorca, who unlike Oriol, who comes from Alcanar and comes from a family of band players, came to the horn by chance, was the one who proposed to her classmates to go more seriously and do a master's degree. In Lucerne the desire to investigate was born.
Now they have just launched a verkami campaign to release in April their first CD with the repertoire that they have been making their own, including Developments, by the Swiss Dieter Ammann, which gives the album its title. “This is one of her first works, and it explains the evolution of sound, from the beginning, when everything is air, and then it becomes sound and rhythmic,” Maria concludes.
The Municipal Band of Barcelona, directed by Manel Valdivieso, will put the icing on this edition of Emergents on Sunday 18 in L'Auditori, with the world premiere of Concert Dances for double bass and band, by clarinetist, director and composer Albert Gumí. And the double bass soloist will be Blai Gumí, one of the most outstanding emerging talents who, at just 22 years old, won the soloist position at the Bayerische Staatsoper.
