Enthusiastic, joyful, zany, fresh, colorful and polished, the music of young Basque-Spanish composer Mikel Urquiza, born in 1988, is also rich beyond compare. Every listen to Espiègle (l'empreinte digitale), a recording by Ensemble C Barré (Marseille) and the Neue Vocalsolisten (Stuttgart) conducted by Sébastien Boin, reveals yet another detail, whether it's a facet hidden in a fleeting moment, a dazzling harmonic and sonic splendor emerging from a small detour, or a hidden quotation missed in the continuous abundance.

Quotation isUrquiza's art of composition, and he seems to glue or recycle as he breathes whatever comes to hand, in a chiseled mosaic. Opening the disc, the whirlwind Lavora stanca for twelve instrumentalists (2020) makes you dizzy. Everything from revolutionary songs and national anthems to Wagnerian leitmotifs and birdsong. Everything is transformed into everything, from the whistling of Disney's Seven Dwarfs to El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, from L'Internationale to Marseillaise. This fanfare start, inspired by Cesare Pavese's Travailler fatigue , acts like a trailer and makes the most of the sound palette of the twelve musicians in C Barré, this ensemble with such a singular instrumentarium: bass clarinet and clarinet, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone, trumpet, accordion, cymbalum, piano, percussion, mandolin, guitar, harp, cello and double bass, all equipped with triangles.

The four pieces in My voice is my password (2021) explore the theme of robotic messages from telephone exchanges and the Internet. These nightmarish symbols of administrative technical coldness, which have invaded our inhumanized ultraliberal world, are evoked in a perfectly organic way and with piquant humor by the six a capella voices of the Neue Vocalsolisten, sprinkled with numerous quotations, from Bach to jazz. Striking!

Mandolin, guitar and harp form a large part of C Barré's sound identity. Mikel Urquiza dedicates Elurretan (2017, "On the snow", in Basque) to them. The three parts of the work sublimate their timbres with beautiful mastery, scraped and rubbed on "Mara-mara", in glissando on "Irrist" and in subtle percussion on the tremolos of "Dardar".

Voices and instruments unite on two works, More sweetly forgot... (2017), for soprano, soprano saxophone, accordion and percussion, and Songs of Spam (2019) for six voices and seven instruments. The former is based on poems by Sappho translated by Anne Carson, very freely interpreted in works with a ritual character - it's not surprising to recognize a quotation from Stockhausen 's Stimmung in "Youth". Songs of Spam is a four-piece evocation of the advertising pollution continuously spewed out by spam, with such humor that it's almost laughable. In the manner of a religious ceremony, the incongruous phrases spread, "Billions and billions" hammered home in the second piece, in the manner of Donald Trump, heating up the servers until our world burns down.

The album closes with a tribute to the Chansonnier de Palacio, a famous manuscript collection from the Spanish Renaissance, from which Cancionero sin palacio (2021) offers a loving, variegated rereading, which once again sublimates the timbral richness of the twelve instrumentalists of Ensemble C Barré. This recording celebrates the splendors and follies of humanity. It can be played over and over again, revealing new colors as long as the world keeps turning.

Guillaume Kosmicki

Espiègle, by Mikel Urquiza with Ensemble C Barré and Neue Vocalisten, conducted by Sébastien Boin - Label L'empreinte digitale 

Photo © Rui Camilo
Photo © Sebastian Berger
Photo © Cécile Chassang