La Cascada de Lutour, música i natura

STOPPING IS NOT AN OPTION!

A love poem by Joan Maragall.

An unpublished musical work by composer Brando Borràs for mixed choir, mezzo-soprano and orchestra.

A video-concert recorded in a natural setting.

We started the project in October 2019, and despite the many constraints of the pandemic, we are determined to complete it

CAN YOU HELP US MAKE IT POSSIBLE?

Since it started in 1984, Font d'en Fargues Choir has grown to become a cultural reference in the neighborhood of Font d'en Fargues and in the Horta-Guinardó district of Barcelona.

During these thirty-seven years we have performed a varied repertoire that incorporates many styles of music, both in our own concerts and in co-productions with other choirs and musicians, from singing a cappella to working with amateur musicians as well as professional soloists and orchestras.

Since 1995 our conductor has been Marta Finestres, who is from the Font d’en Fargues neighborhood herself. Marta is a music educator and professional director. Under her direction the choir has not only grown in numbers, but also and especially in musical quality and sensitivity.

This is the video of the confined concert of Christmas 2020 that we recorded at Casal of la Font d'en Fargues

One of the choir's missions is to support young talents. Since 2012 Brando Borràs has been with the choir as pianist and arranger. As a result of this collaboration, we have the opportunity to premiere and promote his symphonic work La Cascada de Lutour.

We were originally joined in this project by other choirs - about a hundred singers in total - and an orchestra made up of both professional and amateur musicians.

Given the circumstances we have been in since March 2020, during which the other choirs and orchestra have often been unable to rehearse, we decided to redesign the project. Our new idea is for Font d’en Fargues Choir to make a video concert of La Cascada du Lutour, and in this way we can not only continue to enjoy the piece ourselves, but also allow many other people to enjoy it too.

In the video, the choir will perform La Cascada de Lutour for the first time. Due to current health restrictions, we will record each section (sopranos, contraltos, tenors and basses) separately.

The recording studio will be the theatre of the Casal Font d'en Fargues, and Brando himself will record the audio using his own recording equipment

He has also orchestrated the work himself using virtual instruments from the BBC library https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbcso.

Subsequently, we will record a video in a natural setting, with the entire choir singing over the audio tracks. Given the Covid-19 restrictions and the financial constraints of the choir, we have three options:

A. Record in a natural setting in Catalonia, and obtain photos and videos of the waterfall of Latour to integrate into our video.

B. Send a small team to France to record the waterfall, and then edit the video with the images of the choir in a natural environment in Catalonia.

C. Take the full choir to the waterfall of Lutour and record the video there.

Our objective in each case is to produce a professional, twenty-minute video of the highest musical and aesthetic quality.

To achieve this goal, we need backers. Will you help us?

We would love you to make a pledge to support us. By contributing to this project, you would also be helping us to continue working in our neighborhood to promote community through music.

Who are we?

Marta Finestres

Music teacher and educator with a postgraduate in speech therapy to correct voice disorders. She has a long career as a conductor and teacher of music theory, musical notations and choral singing. She is also a mezzosoprano and has sung in choirs and groups with different styles, such as the Madrigal Choir, Musdeveus and Gospel Train, which she also conducted. Since 1995 she has been the director of the Font d'en Fargues Choir and since 2016 the artistic, pedagogical and musical director of the Alella Municipal Choir. She believes deeply in the therapeutic power of music and its strength as a tool for change and social transformation. That is why she has always been committed to grassroots culture linked to the social context and is actively working to increase the standing of the world of music and culture in general.

Brando Borràs

Composer, pianist and music teacher. Master in Music for ENTI-UB Entertainment Experiences. Degree in Music and Composition from the musicians' workshop. Director of the soundtrack "Tibidabo Park Magical Christmas" for the 2019-20 theme park season. Pianist and arranger of Font d'en Fargues Choir and of the Alella Municipal Choir. He is the author of the symphonic poem La Cascada de Lutour.

Llorenç Oliveras

Audiovisual producer with more than thirty-five years of experience as a video director, photographer, camera operator and video technician.

Coral Font d'en Fargues

We currently have forty singers, who find choral singing an enjoyable and stimulating experience. The choir is a cultural reference both in the neighborhood and the wider district. We received the Horta-Guinardó Prize in 2006. The makeup of the choir is diverse and includes a good number of people with little theoretical music knowledge and few technological resources. Together we prepare our repertoires through rigorous but at the same time motivating practice.

What will we do with your contributions?

Your contribution will make it possible to cover all the production, pre and post-production costs of the video, as well as the fees for the virtual orchestra, and possibly the costs of the trip to the waterfall, as well as the cost of rewards to backers.

To achieve our goal we need at least seven thousand euros. If we achieve more, we will be able to improve the objectives and the quality of the project.

Composition 600 €

Management and Micro-patronage 700 €

Musical direction 1,400 €

Video 4,300 €

Planned Timescale

The timescale for this project is dependent on how the Covid-19 pandemic evolves.

While we cannot accurately predict the end date of the video concert, our goal is to finalise it by the end of July 2021, and we’ve set ourselves a final deadline of October.

We will premiere it on a very special day: the twenty-second of November, the day of Saint Cecilia, patroness of music!

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