From the hand of Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapelle Roan, Charli XCX, Guns N’rose, Kendrick Lamar, SZA or Post Malone, Barcelona is again this year a world reference of large format concerts and festivals. All of these will be exclusive actions in Spain. Others, such as Imagine Dragons or Jennifer López, will have their replica in other cities.
If the Rolling Stones have not deprogrammed its concert, which were going to start turned in Barcelona, the city’s poster would have been even more dazzling. From Mick Jagger to the author of Bad Guy : The very history of popular music.
Festivals apart, all these concerts have as its scenario the mountain of Montjuïc, a gift for live music for its isolation (relative) of the neighborhoods. The Olimpic Stadi, managed by BSM, will live a splendid summer after the premiere of the new Bernabéu threatened his supremacy as a forum of great concerts.
Real Madrid entered this business with the impetus of a guitarist of Trash metal In a Lied recital. From his breakdown, both the Metropolitan and the Lluís Companys have benefited, although it is true that the fair victory of the Madrid neighbors has empowered those of all of Spain, or not they are right in their activism against live music.
Stopped sounding in 1974; Its 11,171 tubes languish waiting for restoration …
It is about to see what impact the extension of the Camp Nou works on the musical activity of the Estadi. For now, the only concert announced for the new season, that of Post Malone of September 12, does not interfere with the activity of Barça. But they are little to trust the deadlines that the club gives for the return home.
The other great mountain enclosure with musical use, Sant Jordi, works at full performance. In industry media it is interpreted that, by tradition, Barcelona remains the priority destiny of foreign musicians visiting the country. But they add that the growing specialization of the Movistar Arena Madrid in Spanish and Latin American artists further offers the Sant Jordi.
In this context, the announced expansion of the Sant Jordi Club to welcome up to about 8,000 spectators is valued not only as the cheriff of the mountain, but also as a key incorporation into the city’s rooms system, much needy of a space with a middle type capacity. From the City Council, musical operators have already been contacted to advise how to reconvert the enclosure in a European reference.
Billie Eilish will offer this summer two concerts at the Palau Sant Jordi
This work is part of the relaunch of the Montjuïc mountain as a space for culture and sport on the 2029 horizon, when the centenary of the International Exhibition is celebrated. The project is ambitious and, in the hands of the City Council and the FIRA, promises to reactivate disuse spaces and articulate new circuits for culture and leisure. But everything indicates that there will be a pending recovery, very limited in space but called becoming – some day – into a large city operation.
It is enough to look up to the right, when you access the Oval Room of the National Palau, to discover there an imposing organ (an authentic building Secret of several floors) whose 11,171 tubes stopped sounding in 1974. Forever? I hope not.
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On the table there is an exciting restoration project that once promoted personalities of the music scene-among them, the co-director of the Sónar Ricard Robles or the organist Juan de la blonde-and that allowed not only to insufflate life to the old instrument, but to turn its reconstruction into a process that involved artisans and members of the local techno-artistic community, making the operation an event of international projection open to the city.
The Oval Room of the MNAC, with the organ to the background
The problem? Its high cost: years ago it was already estimated at about 6 million euros, although it is true that it was hoped to start to make it immediately with the visit to the restoration work.
For now, the body has not been invited to the Montjuïc Centennial Investment Festival. But one day we will have to resurrect him, although for this he has to fall in love with him a sponsor who puts his last name. Welcome will be.
The toll
Formula 1 and with music elsewhere
Building an urban circuit of Formula 1 in a democratic country is not an easy issue, as the promoters of the future Grand Prix of Spain in Madrid already check. Neither neighborhoods can be erased to build fantasy curves nor can the neighbors be ignored. Victims of the preparations have been the outdoor concerts scheduled in Ifema, which will be transferred to the interior of the fair so as not to heat the spirits of some neighbors that will have to endure the thunderous roar of the monoplays.
The festivals
Rumbo to Montmeló
The Afterlife Festival, which will be held in June, has changed its headquarters of the Forum for the Circuit of Barcelona-Catalunya, managed by the FIRA. If the Apeadero ends up with the circuit, Montmeló will become a very appropriate enclosure for various concerts and festivals. Of course, events as relevant and characteristic as spring Sound, Sónar or Cruïlla, which have been talking with the residents of their surroundings for years, they should continue to find accommodation in their usual stages.
Clem Burke, the first on the left in Blondie Apogee
The battery
Goodbye to Clem Burke
Facethe autobiography of Debbie Harry (dome books), is not only an allegation of Blondie’s vocalist against misogyny in rock, but the exciting story of the future of a mythical group. It explains the chaotic casting in an industrial plant to find a good battery. They appeared about 50 and won Clem Burke (“We liked her appearance and knew how to play”). Patti Smith, who sneaked into the casting as a spy, said he did not work but, luckily, they ignored him. The portentous Burke died on Sunday 6.
