Grup XXI (the Catalonian word, pronounced just like “group”), the Barcelona contemporary music ensemble of which Peter Bacchus is artistic director, just finished it’s third annual fall concert series supported by grants from the province government of the Generalitat of Catalunya, the City of Barcelona and the University of California at Santa Cruz. Four programs were performed in the city of Barcelona as well as in the town of Sant Cugat.

Program #1 was Classic Duos for combinations of flute, violin, cello and piano.

The composers were Prokofiev, Ginastera, Ravel and Pärt. Grup XXI believes that it is just as important to reinforce classics of the contemporary repertory as it is to forge ahead following new paths and styles.

Program #2 was our second year in collaboration with Fundació Phonos, the leading electronic music center in Spain. In this concert we premiered a classic of the electro-acoustic repertory: Synchronisms #2 by Mario Davidovsky from 1963. Part of our yearly joint collaboration with the Fundació Phonos is to give the Spanish premieres of significant historic works of the electronic music repertory.

Also in this concert we premiered Iris by the distinguished Portuguese composer Joao Pedro Olviera, along with Still for cello and tape by Irish composer Fergal Dowling. The concert finished with Landscape for 5 players and tape by the noted Catalonian composer Josep Maria Guix, currently director of the “New Sounds” annual contemporary music festival in Barcelona.

Program #3 was our homegrown world music concert. In a very exciting and innovative program Grup XXI collaborated with instrumentalists from the world of the “cobla”. The cobla is a traditional Catalonian band which consists of tenor and soprano shawms, a one-handed recorder, trumpets, trombones, fischorns and contra-bass.

In this concert we performed recent works by Catalonian composers who have written for combinations of these instruments with our usual classical instruments, a very innovative concert. In addition to other composers, we performed Sardana II by the great Catalonian composer of the twentieth century, Robert Gerhard, a new work by the young Catalonian composer Octavi Rumbau, and the recent Petita Suite for 12 instruments by Peter Bacchus, artistic director of Grup XXI. The internationally recognized composer-conductor Salvador Brotons was our guest conductor. It is an exciting time in Catalonia to be actively working with these singularly expressive instruments and Grup XXI plans to continue each year with this kind of home grown world music concert.

Program #4 was our annual concert of new works for the Pierrot Ensemble + percussion, one of the classic twentieth century chamber formations. In this concert we premiered the third chamber concerto written for Grup XXI, written for our cellist Mark Friedhoff, by Dutch composer Christiaan De Jong.

We are creating a chamber concerto for each of the instruments of the principal formation of Grup XXI: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion. The first two are for flute by recently deceased composer Jorge Liderman, and for piano by the great American virtuoso pianist and composer, Anthony Newman. All of the new works written for Grup XXI are being published by DINSIC PUBLICACIONS of Barcelona in a series entitled The Grup XXI Collection.

We were also honored to premier If Only Mirrors... written for Grup XXI by California composer David Evan Jones, on the faculty of UC Santa Cruz.

Check out our sound bites of Grup XXI!