LIBÉRICA, new project by MANEL FORTIÀ (feat. Antonio Lizana) presents 'ARRELS'

ARRELS Is the first album of Libérica, a new project led by the Catalan double bass player Manel Fortià, who after a season living in New York and having played with great jazz icons such as Dave Liebman, Eliot Zigmund, Ari Hoenig or Chris Cheek among others, decides to return to his homeland and Delve into the traditional Catalan repertoire without letting go of the musical effervescence of the jazz mecca, where its multiculturalism has always led to the merging of different styles to create new ones. With this philosophy, Libérica seeks common ground between traditional Catalan song and flamenco, using free jazz as a conducting vehicle. The renewal and updating of folklore is necessary and helps to keep it alive.

It is an album that revisits the great standards of traditional Catalan song, the result of the nostalgia lived by Manel Fortià in recent years in the United States. Somehow there the need to seek his musical roots is awakened and he begins to incorporate into his repertoire some Catalan hymns such as 'El Cant Dels Ocells', which also covers with flamenco sounds together with the singer Magalí Sare, 'La Dama d'Aragó' or 'Els Tres Tambors' in the key of flamenco and jazz, mixing their lyrics with traditional songs that speak of the same themes but with different words.

During the time that Manel Fortià lived in the United States, he met the legendary pianist Chano Dominguez, a clear reference in flamenco-jazz and with whom he now works regularly. He is one of the musicians who inspires him the most, makes him grow his passion for this genre and has more desire to continue experimenting in this direction, which his mentor Javier Colina had already awakened when he was a student at the Taller de Músics (Barcelona). 

The voices of the Catalan Pere Martínez and the Cádiz-born Antonio Lizana represent these two coexisting worlds within the Peninsula that meet in Liberia in an organic and free way thanks to jazz, which could be said to have become an integrating music and a universal language during the last decades.

The Libérica group, apart from having the stellar collaboration of the Cádiz saxophonist and cantaor Antonio Lizana, an exceptional musician with a long international career and who has established himself as a benchmark in his style, also has two of the new values ​​of flamenco-jazz made in Catalonia such as the singer Pere Martinez and the pianist Max Villavecchia from 'Los Aurora'. In addition to the international collaboration of one of the new revelations in European modern jazz, the French drummer Raphael Pannier (Miguel Zenón, Aaron Goldberg, etc.), resident between Paris and New York.

Manel Fortià says: “In a society in which we find more and more rules that trap and control us, music is one of the few spaces where we can still be free. This is one of the reasons why Libérica was born, to help us connect with our roots from the air and make us travel through them to discover new paths and find common ground between them ”.

Libérica is a co-production of Manel Fortià, La Marfà Creation Center and the Auditori de Girona. The Fira Mediterrania de Manresa opted for this project last October, programming it as one of the festival's highlights.