Cavall de foc
Picap, 1999
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With Cavall de foc Maria del Mar Bonet returned, after many years, to the traditional song, in this case from the Balearics, Catalonia and Valencia. And she did it in a freer and musically more contemporary way. She explained this herself for the presentation concert in the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid: After the album of homage to my thirty years of career I had several album projects, but finally to meet a challenge I had pending for some time, and I have dealt with it with total freedom and great enthusiasm. I have had a really good time recording this album… the traditional songs – and I have chosen those I consider more earthly – they arise from an ancestral cave, from the veritable soul of the people, and if you let them flow freely instead of constraining them in a corset, they also emerge like that, like a vase found by an archaeologist, which placed on the table seems like the latest designer model. At no time have I wanted to do traditional song, and much less at this stage in my career, in an orthodox way. I simply took the songs I liked and dressed them up in the way I wanted, with everything that I have inside me.
The majority of the songs are adaptations by Maria del Mar Bonet, and the musical arrangements by Javier Mas or Feliu Gasull. The musicians taking part in the album, as well as Javier Mas and Feliu Gasull were: Dimitri Psonis and Jordi Gaspar with occasional collaborations from Isaac and Miguel Vigueras on hand-clapping, the Coral Cantiga, Olvido Lanza on the violin, the group Al Tall in the song La ploma de la perdiu, and Shyam Sunder on the bansuri in Aqueixa és sa darrera.
The presentation of the record was done in the series of concerts in the Plaça del Rei in the summer of 1998.
1999, 2000 and 2001 were years of major national and international projection. She toured with the album Cavall de foc, around the Spanish State (Gijon, Murcia, Almeria, Albacete, Zaragoza, University of Valencia, among other places) and Catalonia, and in Europe visited Greece, Sardinia, Alguer, Marseille, Tunis, Montpellier, Bucharest, Cyprus, Rotterdam, Istanbul, Athens, Coimbra and on the 29th of January 1999 in the Festival Midem in Cannes, France. On the 18th of March 2001 she presented the record in Madrid in the cycle “Cultura a tres cantos” and later in the Teatro Mónaco de Onda in Castelló; on the 6th, 7th and 8th of July 2000 in the Tanz and Folk Festival in Rudolstadt, Germany. She presented the record in Montreal, Canada. In May 2001 she toured the United States: Providence, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
In December 1999 she took part in the Festival del Mil·leni in the Palau de la Música Catalana with Amancio Prada. The next year, on the 17th of December 2000, she performed accompanied by Maria Farantouri. From these two collaborations emerged two new shows that would be presented during the following years. With Amancio Prada it would be Por amar el arte and with Maria Farantouri the show Canten la Grècia de Theodorakis. This latter work, after the Festival del Mil·leni would reach the newly-opened Auditori de Barcelona, and later in the Festival de la Medina, in Tunis, the year before having been presented in Paris and Munich, Germany.
From 1999 to mid-2001 she combined three different shows: Cavall de foc, Dòmino, presented in the Plaça del Rei in 2000, and Canten la Grècia de Theodorakis alongside the Greek singer, with who in July 2001 sang in the Festival de Cordoba and the Festival Castillo de Alcañiz.
In November 1999 she took part in the homage to Teresa Rebull. In July 2000 she intervened in the Festa per la Pau in Barcelona.
