The Barcelona musical August continues to have its main reference in the Mas i Mas Festival after twenty years. To celebrate this long journey, this year's edition will offer more than 160 concerts of a wide variety of types.
The festival will start on July 27 at the Palau de la Música and will be led by the Clasijazz Orchestra, a combo made up of such outstanding musicians as Wayne Escofery, Perico Sambeat, Enrique Oliver or Daahoud Salim.
Undoubtedly one of the axes and great attractions of this twentieth installment will be the celebration of the fifty years of the legendary Zeleste room in Barcelona, remembering the work and person of Gato Pérez, as well as layetana music in parallel.
The dense and abundant offer will be substantiated in 162 performances and sessions of flamenco, jazz, soul, r
Most of these will be housed in the different venues of the Mas i Mas group (Jamboree, Tarantos/Sala 2, Moog and the new Sala 3, inaugurated last year. To these venues we must add the Palau de la Música and the Paral· lel 62.
A radiant and happy Joan Mas -director of the festival and head of the Mas i Mas group- commented yesterday at the poster presentation that "this edition is going to be the best we've done so far at the festival", to add as a great achievement that " Twenty years ago in Barcelona in August there was no one and now there are more and more people" programming music. Even so, he added with dismay that "unfortunately we are one of the few who do things in August and I encourage Barcelona to get active because you cannot live without music."
Josep Mestres, artistic director of the Jamboree, reviewed the content of the extensive poster, focusing on the most jazzy, so to speak. In this sense, he commented on unavoidable appointments in the aforementioned room such as Jerry Bergonzi, Bill Charlap, Michael Kanan, Jordi Rossy, Simon Moullier, Martín Díaz, Anggie Obin, Ramona Horvath
At this noon event at the Antigua Fábrica Damm, the flutist Anggie Obin made an appearance, speaking about her performance at the festival, where she will present a project accompanied by "incredible musicians".
The festival also proposes temptations beyond the strictly jazz with names like Hip Hop Horns Brass Collective, Tandoori LeNoir, Karime Amaya, Carmen Doorá, Flamenco Queer or djs from the electronic scene.
As usual, the starting signal will take place at the Palau de la Música with an unprecedented performance by the Clasijazz Orchestra, a project that will bring together musicians of various ages and who will give life to a piece by Charles Mingus, Epitaph, which according to They say it has never been performed in Barcelona. Mestres described the inclusion of this project as synonymous with the "very strong start" of the festival, while Pablo Mazuecos, responsible for the project, commented via zoom on the characteristics of a proposal that can be described as one of the most exceptional on the national jazz scene.
One of the indisputably tastiest dishes a priori of the cycle is the vindication and "reminder" of layetan music. With the hook that this year marks the half century of the opening of the legendary Zeleste room on Platería street -currently Argenteria-, the festival wants to make visible what was the phenomenon of layetan music that somehow gravitated around that space with soloists like Jaume Sisa or Pau Riba or bands like Secta Sónica, Orquestra Mirasol, Companyia Elèctrica Dharma, Iceberg... Among the memories, the one that will be offered by the one that will host Room 3 in memory of the pianist Jordi Sabatés
The official closing will take place on September 2 in the Paral·lel 62 room with a memory/homage to the figure of the guitarist figure of the guitarist Jordi Bonell and to the aforementioned layetan sounds. In fact, it will be an atypical concert with two formations, a group created for the occasion under the initiative of Víctor Cortina, while the Barcelona Art Orchestra will recall that musical movement in an orchestral key.
However, the final party will take place a day later in its central field of operations, the Jamboree, in Plaça Reial, with the quintet The Rhythm Treasures and the voice of Myriam Swanson
After exposing what awaits fans next August, Joan Mas did not want to waste the opportunity to explain why in this edition there will be no open-air concerts in Plaça Reial. He revealed that he has not requested permission from the City Council because he has decided not to carry out any. Which he will do next year.
He justified the decision by remembering that last year the urban den fined him because a mariachi concert lasted ten minutes. "Music annoys politicians; they think that people are there to pay taxes, work and not bother." And already accelerated, he sentenced: "for the institutions better that the music disappear."
