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Ben a prop
Ariola, 1989
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From the 4th to the 21st of February 1988 Maria del Mar Bonet and Manel Camp gave a series of concerts titled Ben a prop in the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona with a big success in attendance and a favourable response from the critics to this new challenge for the singer which took an incursion into the world of jazz at the hand of the Manresa musician. Favià Puigserver was responsible for the stage production. In the review by Miquel Jurado in El País he said: Maria del Mar Bonet has not become a jazz Singer, but has simply shown she is a singer with a capital S, capable of taking on very varied repertoires, making them hers and seducing everyone that approaches her. “Ben a prop” will become one of the revelations of the year and not exactly for the morbid curiosity of testing whether Bonet is capable of coming through unscathed, but for her honesty and quality.

The songs included on the album are Jim, which they had already played together in 1979 in Per Corpus al Romea, two by Maria del Mar Bonet already known, Si véns prest and No voldria res més araEpigrama by Salvat-Papasseit with music by Toti Soler, and Jo em donaria a qui em volgués by Palau i Fabre and music by Maria del Mar Bonet, as well as adaptations of classic American standards such as Embraceable you by GershwinAs tears go by by the Rolling Stones and Someone to watch over me by J.Davis and J. Sherman, where the adaptations to Catalan were done by Josep Tero.

The album was recorded in the Gema studios in Barcelona in February 1989 with arrangements by Manel Camp, Bruno Menny, the French sound technician who had already worked with Maria del Mar Bonet in Normandy on the recording of the Jardí Tancat album, and artistic direction by Maria del Mar Bonet and Manel Camp. The musicians taking part were Horacio Fumero, Xavier Figuerola, Lluís Ribalta, Andreu Ubach and the String Quartet.

In March the tour of Ben a prop began in Perpignan, with visits to the Teatro Albéniz in Madrid and in July in Palma within the setting of the Festival de Cançons de la Mediterrània.

In May they presented the album in the Teatre Principal in Palma, Mallorca, and on the 1st of July at the Festival Grec of Barcelona.

Concert photos Ben a prop
by F. Ros Riba and Toni Catany, 1988
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Graphic Documentation
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Concert Ben a prop
Teatre Lliure, February 18 and 19, 1988
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