The Spanish pianist and composer performs tonight at the Sala Clamores in Madrid with a solo piano concert.
Two years have already passed since the release of Periferia and the new album of songs by the Spanish pianist and composer Clara Peya (Palafrugell, 1986) is not long away. But before that happens, the artist performs this evening at 20:00 in Madrid’s Sala Clamores (Alburquerque, 14) in a solo concert, with piano and synthesizers, in which Peya expresses herself fully, with a language that links her to the great European post-minimalist musical current of Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds and Max Richter.
“My new album was already recorded,” she explains over the phone, “but because of the record company it has taken longer to come out than I thought, and it will be released on March 29th; but as I need to perform, because that’s what I do for a living, I have started a solo piano tour [today in Madrid, on 15 April in Seriñá (Gerona), on 22 April in Ordino (Andorra), on 28 April in Vic (Barcelona), on 29 April in L’Avellà (Barcelona), at the Festival Ressons Penedés and on 6 May in Villanueva y Geltrú (Barcelona)]. These concerts have coincided with a great moment in my life, when being alone with my piano suits me very well: I can’t hide and this is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. It is the essence of who I am.
What is this change that has taken place?
The change is that the things I have prioritised in my life until now no longer work for me. My codes, my ideals, my beliefs are breaking and this is a moment of profound change, also of crisis, but it is very interesting and I am lucky to be able to go through it at a time without much noise around me, with stability. And I can allow myself the privilege of living it.
Can you be a little more specific?
For example, I am getting very emotional: I used to wear my armour and my way of acting was always very reactive; a fire behaviour, very vindictive and, all of a sudden, I am generating much more empathy and thinking much more about how I do things; I understand people much more and I have much less desire to argue. On the other hand, I never used to be very satisfied with my concerts, because I always demanded more from myself, but I’m changing here too.
And why is that?
Because I’m getting older! That’s how it is. I’ve been seeing that everything before has worked for me up to a certain point and now it doesn’t work for me anymore. It has been very functional and it has been a very interesting process, because it has been very fertile, but now it is too noisy for me. This doesn’t mean that I’m no longer that person who fights for what he believes in, but now I can do it from a different place.
You have only two piano albums: A-A-Analogia de l’A-mort (2019) Estat de larva (2020). Are they the ones you are going to perform at Clamores?
Some themes yes, two or three of each, but I’m going to take them to another terrain. I’m going with piano and analogue modular synthesizers and the universe of sound changes, because the synthesizers process what happens in situ and the result is surprising. When people talk about improvisation, they always think of jazz and a musician who goes through all the chords with total freedom, but the term improvisation is much broader than that. Improvising can have to do with many more things. Something I really like about playing with modular synthesizers is that the concert is very much alive and what happens, what they process on the fly, affects me and the way I play, and that generates freedom.
So half of the concert is going to be improvisation?
Not exactly, because I start from something that already exists to go somewhere else. And one of the things I like most is to explore the space between the pieces, between the themes themselves. How one leads you to another, and just for that reason it’s the same piece.
Ede, a young girl from Madrid who does very interesting things, is going to participate in the concert in a song she’s going to sing. She has collaborated on my next album and as she told me she was going to come to the concert as an audience, I asked her to sing her song and we are going to do it.