Llorenç Barber | MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona

participant

Llorenç Barber

birth

València, Spain, 1948

last update

23-04-2025

Proposing sound interventions and spatiotemporal compositions of great magnitude led him to create the concept of Plurifocality, and to enter into the interstices of cultural communities and sound art in public spaces, which led him to conceive of "The city as an orchestra".

Llorenç Barber is a musician, composer, writer, poet, researcher, performer, pioneer in the conception of sound art in Europe and innovator of minimalism in Spain. He studied composition in Siena with Franco Donatoni, in Darmstadt with Stockhausen, Ligeti and Kagel, in Bayreuth with Boulez and in London with Christian Wolff.

After learning the vocal technique of diphonic singing "Khoomi" with Trân Quang Hai, Kosugi and Charlie Morrow, he created the portative bell, a unique instrument with which he developed a proprietary vocal and instrumental technique.

In 1986, he created the Flatus Vocis Trio with Fátima Miranda and Bartolomé Ferrando, a group focused on creating spoken music with an emphasis on the sounds, intonations, gestures and phrases of common speech in numerous everyday situations.

They have performed city concerts with bells in more than 200 cities in twenty countries, serving as the closing sound framework for three cultural capitals (Lisbon, Copenhagen, Stockholm), Art Biennials (Japan, France, Thailand, Brazil), as the inauguration of International Summits of Heads of State and Government (Salamanca, Rome) and for other civil and religious commemorations. His work has been the subject of reflections, filmographies, books and doctoral theses.

In 2017, along with Carles Santos, he received the first Bankia Prize for Musical Talent of the Valencian Community. In the same year, his work "SOUND RITES, An utopian 'City Concert' of Rotherham as Example for the humanity" for bells, tubular bells, children's processional choir, and five Muazzin Nasheed, received the Guinness Award for its "exceptionality and beauty". His work "Som cos, som foc, som" again received the Guinness Award for the largest body percussion ensemble (20,000 band musicians) in 2018. In 2018, together with Montserrat Palacios, he was conferred the title of Doctor by the Liberis Artium Universitas with an outstanding Cum Laude. Since 2005, he has been an Académic Correspondent of the Catalan Academy of S. Jordi. Since 2011, he has been a visiting professor on the Master's Degree in Sound Art at the University of Barcelona. In 2023-2024 his sound and visual work will be exhibited at the Centro del Carmen Cultura Contemporanea and the IVAM in Valencia.

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documents

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Cuina oberta -- Invocacions (Preludi) [Reportatge fotogràfic activitat]