music: Miquèu Montanaro
poems: Max Rouquette
Tornatz me
Luz
Listen
Calle Obispo
Max Rouquette was born in 1908 in Argelliers, a small village near Montpellier in the South of France. Most of his poetry, prose and plays were written in Occitan and only started to be known in France when it got translated. Between 1978 and 1983, he directed the literary magazine Oc, a showcase for Occitan avant-garde culture. He earned an international renown since he has been translated to French and several other languages from the 1980’s. He carried on writing his prose and theatre until he died in 2005, aged 96, in Montpellier.
Composer and musician with already 35 albums to his name, he renewed the traditional practice of his main instrument, the galoubet-tambourin, over its folkloric confinement. He likes to collaborate with many different musical genres. He composes for theatre, dance and directs several multidisciplinary creations. Since the beginning of his career, he has had an interest for “clever” music, wanting to enlarge his experimentations beyond traditional music. He explored the repertoire of the troubadours with Ferenc Sebö and Kobzos Kiss Tamás and he takes part in several recordings and tours in Eastern Europe amongst other lands.
Roxane Martin is a sensitive and master harpist. Miquèu Montanaro is a composer of original musical geographies, poetic and nomad. ARPA lets us discover a music rooted in the South but exploring the world and time. It reposes on an open style, a reference to Max Roqueta’s poems in prose, to the Mediterranean and Caribbean rhythms and a free interpretation of these compositions with joy and complicity.
Miqueu Montanaro, ethnic flutes
Roxane Martin, pedal harp
