Blixa Bargeld: “Being on a tour is very much like working on an oil rig platform in the North Sea”. For once, and without serving as a precedent, we in Spain have beaten the UK to the publication of a book that has, in principle, music as its central theme….

Carles Santos: “The audience I’m interested in is the one that comes from pop and rock”. Today, 1 July, the pianist and composer Carles Santos (Vinaroz, 1940-2017), would have been 82 years old. To remember him and to encourage anyone reading this to listen to his music, I am rescuing…

Steve Reich: “In our [20th] century, the greatest artist who ever lived was born in Spain”. Coinciding with my review on Steve Reich‘s book Conversations, I wanted to recall the interview I conducted with him in 1987, when he visited Madrid to perform at the Autumn Festival. The interview was…

Steve Reich: “Tuning [ethnic instruments] to our scale is a musical violation”. Coinciding with my review on Steve Reich’s book Conversations I wanted to recall the interview I did with him in 1987, when he visited Madrid to perform at the Autumn Festival. Unfortunately, I was still a journalist and…

Luis de Pablo: “In general, I listen to these works with satisfaction. I don’t want to be inmodest”. Today will be the premiere at the Teatro Real of El abrecartas, the sixth and last opera composed by Luis de Pablo, who died last 10 October without ever seeing the work…

Clara Peya: “What am I going to do on a solo tour? I’m going to die of grief!” Clara Peya (Palafrugell, 1986) is a leading figure on the music scene of Cataluña (the region in the NE of Spain). In 2019, at the age of thirty-three, she received the Catalan…

Vicente Molina Foix: “Luis gave me the chance to make a dream come true”. The press conference to present the world premiere of El abrecartas [The Letter Opener], the sixth opera by Luis de Pablo, who died last October, took place yesterday, Thursday, in the Gayarre Hall of the Teatro…

Vicente Molina Foix: «Este estreno era uno de los grandes sueños de Luis de Pablo». El abrecartas [The letter opener] is one of the best-known novels by the novelist, poet, playwright and film critic Vicente Molina Foix (Elche, Alicante, 1946). It is a novel that, like a fresco, traces the…

Santi Quintans: “I liked everything about Reich”. 3 October 2021 marked Steve Reich’s 85th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, the record label Megadiscs Classics released the album Guitar Hero. Santiago Quintans Plays Steve Reich, in which the Spanish guitarist and composer Santiago Quintans (Vigo, 1975) performed his own versions of…

Eduardo Polonio: “In 1969 I was already making repetitive or minimal music”. On 20 August 1988 I published the following interview with Eduardo Polonio (Madrid, 1981) in the newspaper Ya, to which I was a regular contributor between 1985 and 1991. The opera to which he alludes was neither finally…

Luis de Pablo: “I compose because it is necessary for my balance”. In February 1985, a few days after Luis de Pablo’s 55th birthday, and when I was just a novice journalist who had just started writing for what was to be a brief career at the newspaper Liberación, I…

Ólafur Arnalds: “Good music is good music, no matter the genre”. On 12 March 2019 Ólafur Arnalds performed in Madrid at the Teatro Nuevo Apolo. Some few days before the concert, Metrópoli, the Friday supplement of the newspaper El Mundo, published this brief interview conducted by telephone. A little less…