‘Pasiones y Rituales’, the album

This album is the culmination of a project many years in the making which began in Matanzas, Cuba, where as a child I lived close to the port, on the fringes of the predominately Afro-Cuban neighbourhood, Simpson.

I lived to a soundtrack of the drums and the pianos, the overwhelming vibrations and intense emotions which are integral to this project. Composing the three pieces of this album would take me almost two decades.

During the recording process in London, I travelled to Matanzas to rehearse and perform one of the pieces, before I was able to finally complete the recording in London.

Each piece is dedicated to a member of my family. The album is a trilogy related to my personal life story.

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QUIMERAS

by Marietta Veulens | Pasiones y Rituales

About Quimeras

Quimeras, inspired by my aunt, musician and choir master, alludes to the bolero, central to Cuban and Latin popular music expressing intense
emotions.

ENCUENTROS

by Marietta Veulens | Pasiones y Rituales

About Encuentros

Encuentros is dedicated to my mother, my first piano teacher, who taught me the art of feeling music, and to my father, an amateur percussionist and rumba dancer. This piece was written in Brixton, London, with the memory and the nostalgia of my own past, and the new richer musical and personal experiences with new colleagues and new people in my life.

MISA MATANCERA

by Marietta Veulens | Pasiones y Rituales

About The Misa Matancera

The Misa Matancera (Mass) is dedicated to my sister Ana and her life companion Noelia. The connection between the Spanish and the Afro-Cuban cultures are expressed in the Misa through love. It is evocative of my childhood in Matanzas, where transculturation enveloped my sister and myself. The piece expands to merge amongst the ritualistic Afro-Cuban drums and voices interpreted and recorded by the Cuban master percussionists and singers of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, whom I directed in the Teatro Nacional in La Habana in 1992 using analogue reels. Then from the drums and the voices to the piano and the sounds of bells to reach the climactic moment of an invocation with voices, ritualistic drums and the piano allowing the apotheosis to take place for a cathartic finale.