If you caught Kenny Garrett and his quartet in Sa Pobla earlier this week or will be rocking up at Pollensa's Sant Domingo cloister to get a bit of the Chamber Orchestra of the National Theatre of Prague tomorrow, then I hope you have made and will make the most of them. Both the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival and the Pollensa International Music Festival could become dodos of Mallorca's arts world. Extinct.
The Pollensa festival very nearly didn't happen this year. It did thanks to a sofa-thon at the tourism ministry. Carlos Delgado had his people scrambling around on the ministry settees, hunting for any loose euros that had fallen down the backs, and they came up with a couple of hundred thousand in the nick of time. The mountain of coins duly deposited in the Sant Domingo cloister, the sound of their jangling competed with an ominous bass, the noise of the ministry saying we've helped you out this time, but don't expect us to in future.
The ministry will announce next week which events have passed a test that will guarantee funding from a reserve pot that isn't exactly overflowing. 600 grand is up for grabs for various arts festivals, but not all might qualify. As important is what happens to them down the line. For some the end of the line may well have been reached, and this includes the Sa Pobla Jazz and Pollensa festivals.
Arts funding is often at the bottom of the public spending food chain, though in Mallorca it has seemed to occupy a rather higher level. In part, this has been because the arts are seen as a "good thing" rather than there being any real attempt to quantify benefits. But this is the nature of the beast. Arts contribute to a general welfare, a general quality of life; they shouldn't always be the target of bean-counters. The attitude has not been wrong, far from it, but current circumstances have exposed the vulnerable sustainability of the arts, Mallorcan style.
Certain judgements do occasionally have to be made. In the case of the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, it hasn't simply been a case of putting on some free concerts. There are also the workshops that take place each year, so there is a music educational element to the festival as well. But to come to the free concerts, for whose benefit really are they?
The concerts attract a "nice" Jazz Club crowd (of the type satirised by John Thomson's Louis Balfour character in "The Fast Show"), but they also attract the locals. Nothing wrong with this, the concerts are after all taking place in their town. However, a thing with jazz is that it is an acquired taste. Some of it can be a dreadful racket. Jazz is most certainly not Mallorcan folk music or the direness of the "orchestras" that get dragged onto the stages of Mallorca's fiestas and churn out kitsch cabaret versions of sixties' tunes; the sort of act that might once have been on the under card at Bournemouth's Winter Gardens below Norman Vaughan, the Rockin' Berries and Mrs. Mills. They're rubbish, but the Mallorcan oldsters seem to like them.
Put a McCoy Tyner thumping a piano, a Kenny Garrett wailing on a sax in front of an old Sa Pobla farmer who has pitched up with his missus along with their picnic of potato fritters, trempó and vino, and what exactly does the old farmer make of them? Not a lot probably, but it's free.
I might be doing old Sa Pobla farmers a disservice. Perhaps they are all avid jazz enthusiasts who have vast collections of Blue Note and ECM discs stashed in an outhouse, but I somewhat doubt it.
Free bring free, and free having been free for several years in Sa Pobla creates an expectation that free it will always be. Free is wonderful, and the provision of free entertainment in Mallorca has been laudable. It has enhanced the general quality of life. It would be sad for it to no longer be free, but the alternative has to be considered.
The problem is that charging probably wouldn't cover costs. It doesn't in Pollensa. You can fork out up to 45 euros for a concert during the music festival, but the festival still needs huge amounts of state funding. The Sant Domingo cloister is not exactly Wembley Stadium; it's tiny in terms of what it can generate through ticket sales.
We are, I'm afraid, going to have to accept that some of the cherished and sometimes superb free arts in Mallorca are likely to disappear. Unless, that is, they sell their soul to the corporate shilling of sponsorship. Were it available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arts. Show all posts
Friday, August 12, 2011
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Pianist - Miquel Capllonch
The square in Puerto Pollensa is referred to as the church or market square. In Spanish, it is called Plaza de la Iglesia or del Mercado. Rarely does anyone grant it its actual name - Plaça Miquel Capllonch (the proper Catalan title). In failing to use this name, the person honoured by the square's moniker is ignored. Who is or was Miquel Capllonch?
Capllonch was a native of Pollensa. Born in 1861, on the 14th of this month it will be the 149th anniversary of his birth. One trusts that the town hall is planning a celebration to coincide with his 150th next year. Capllonch is one of Pollensa's and Mallorca's most important figures in the history of music. Pianist and composer, he studied and played in Madrid, Berlin and Barcelona. He was responsible, among other things, for the arrangement for the Alborada of the Patrona fiesta. Schooled initially in organ music in Pollensa, Capllonch went on to be a significant composer of choral and religious works and others. Among the titles of his works are tributes to saints venerated locally, Sant Pere and Sant Vicenç.
Though not necessarily enjoying great international renown, Capllonch was a representative of the arts tradition that emerged in Pollensa around the turn of the twentieth century and which spawned the painting "school" and poetry. This tradition is still very much alive today, and wander around the old town on a quiet summer's day and you will often pass an open set of shutters and windows that allow the sound of piano music to drift into the street.
A mystery is quite why Capllonch remains so obscure to many, especially those not native themselves to Pollensa. Despite the best efforts locally in presenting exhibitions to historical figures, these too often fall into the category of the dull but worthy without an external focus that might attract a foreign or non-Catalan audience. The arts history of Pollensa is strong - Capllonch, Costa i Llobera (poetry), Anglada Camarasa (painting) - as are other aspects of local heritage, such as the philanthropy of Guillem Cifre. Yet it remains largely hidden. Only the art of Dionís Bennássar or the textiles of Martí Vicenç, thanks to the eponymous gallery and museum, might be said to shout out the names of cultural and historical figures from the town. But this, so we keep being told, is - or should be - all part of a different type of tourism.
At least there has been, for five years now, an attempt to honour Capllonch, and that is the "Nit Capllonch". Today, in the convent of Sant Domingo, there is a performance by the Spanish concert pianist David Gómez that will feature works by Capllonch as well as more familiar names such as Bach and Mozart. This annual event, organised by the Capllonch family and the town hall, is also worthy, while Gómez is not an insignificant name to be appearing in Pollensa. But where does it get publicised?
Poor old Capllonch. More people should say his name. More should know that when they're sitting in Bony or Cultural that the square is not so much that of the church or the market, but that of a local pianist. But they won't.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Capllonch was a native of Pollensa. Born in 1861, on the 14th of this month it will be the 149th anniversary of his birth. One trusts that the town hall is planning a celebration to coincide with his 150th next year. Capllonch is one of Pollensa's and Mallorca's most important figures in the history of music. Pianist and composer, he studied and played in Madrid, Berlin and Barcelona. He was responsible, among other things, for the arrangement for the Alborada of the Patrona fiesta. Schooled initially in organ music in Pollensa, Capllonch went on to be a significant composer of choral and religious works and others. Among the titles of his works are tributes to saints venerated locally, Sant Pere and Sant Vicenç.
Though not necessarily enjoying great international renown, Capllonch was a representative of the arts tradition that emerged in Pollensa around the turn of the twentieth century and which spawned the painting "school" and poetry. This tradition is still very much alive today, and wander around the old town on a quiet summer's day and you will often pass an open set of shutters and windows that allow the sound of piano music to drift into the street.
A mystery is quite why Capllonch remains so obscure to many, especially those not native themselves to Pollensa. Despite the best efforts locally in presenting exhibitions to historical figures, these too often fall into the category of the dull but worthy without an external focus that might attract a foreign or non-Catalan audience. The arts history of Pollensa is strong - Capllonch, Costa i Llobera (poetry), Anglada Camarasa (painting) - as are other aspects of local heritage, such as the philanthropy of Guillem Cifre. Yet it remains largely hidden. Only the art of Dionís Bennássar or the textiles of Martí Vicenç, thanks to the eponymous gallery and museum, might be said to shout out the names of cultural and historical figures from the town. But this, so we keep being told, is - or should be - all part of a different type of tourism.
At least there has been, for five years now, an attempt to honour Capllonch, and that is the "Nit Capllonch". Today, in the convent of Sant Domingo, there is a performance by the Spanish concert pianist David Gómez that will feature works by Capllonch as well as more familiar names such as Bach and Mozart. This annual event, organised by the Capllonch family and the town hall, is also worthy, while Gómez is not an insignificant name to be appearing in Pollensa. But where does it get publicised?
Poor old Capllonch. More people should say his name. More should know that when they're sitting in Bony or Cultural that the square is not so much that of the church or the market, but that of a local pianist. But they won't.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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