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Interview
5 July 2015 2.00 h

Four for the price of one

Els Amics de les Arts Each Wednesday at 6.30pm, El Punt Avui airs Catalan Connections. Marcela interviewed the popular Catalan band Els Amics de les Arts: Eduard Costa, Dani Alegret, Joan Enric Barceló and Ferran Piqué.
Wel­come Edu, Dani, Joan Enric and Fer­ran! I know you're quite busy at the mo­ment, so many thanks for com­ing.
Dani: We are at the end of our tour, it's a mo­ment of a lot of work and lots of emo­tions too!
What is your re­la­tion­ship with Eng­lish?
Joan Enric: I stud­ied Eng­lish philol­ogy, I was lucky to fin­ish my stud­ies in Ed­in­burgh and I spe­cialised in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture. Then I be­came a sub­sti­tute teacher of Eng­lish and I taught all ages, from three to 18 years old.
Dani: I did an Eras­mus in Venice, it was the place where I learnt more Eng­lish, speak­ing and writ­ing.
Edu: I spent two years study­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, at Palo Alto. I dis­cov­ered that the Amer­i­can Eng­lish ac­cent was much eas­ier for me than the British ac­cent. When I came back I started teach­ing sci­ence in Eng­lish in a school in the Sarrià neigh­bour­hood of Barcelona. I had to teach grav­ity, elec­tric­ity, all in Eng­lish.
Fer­ran: I am bet­ter at read­ing com­pre­hen­sion rather than speak­ing, I am good at com­put­ers and can un­der­stand com­puter pro­grammes in Eng­lish and I have never lived abroad!
Do you travel abroad a lot for your con­certs?
Dani: Yes, we were lucky to go to Ger­many three years ago. It is a good feel­ing to see peo­ple who don't speak your lan­guage en­joy­ing your music. We've also given con­certs in Lon­don and Man­ches­ter.
Joan Enric: Going abroad is al­ways a chal­lenge. Eng­lish is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage and it was a good ex­pe­ri­ence to sing in Cata­lan and re­alise you get good feed­back and peo­ple can be moved and enjoy it.
In fact you have a song in Eng­lish!
Edu: We did one for the swim­ming cham­pi­onship in Barcelona in 2013, called the City be­tween Blue and Blue, a way of see­ing the re­la­tion­ship of the city with the sea and the water. We had a coach who helped us with Eng­lish!
This year in June you cel­e­brated some­thing re­ally im­por­tant in your ca­reer.
Dani: In June it was 10 years since the Amics de les Arts was cre­ated in a stu­dent flat on car­rer Muntaner with Trav­es­sera de Gràcia in Barcelona and it's nice to see how our lives have changed; be­com­ing a band and mak­ing a liv­ing from our con­certs was a dream. We are prepar­ing big con­certs, play­ing music with a big band, so there will be 20 mu­si­cians on stage in some spe­cial shows at El Grec and at Cap Roig fes­ti­val as well.
How are you going to cel­e­brate your 10th an­niver­sary?
Fer­ran: We wanted to re­lease two new songs and share them with fans. The UK-Irish tour was also part of our an­niver­sary and we cre­ated some spe­cial sun glasses for this oc­ca­sion. We're also play­ing in Canet Rock, the Hits of les Arts. One more thing we want to do is fin­ish our tour with very big con­certs. And, we can an­nounce here ex­clu­sively that in Sep­tem­ber we are going to fin­ish a year and a half of tour with big -for­mat con­certs. And of course, going on hol­i­days!
How have you and your music changed in these 10 years? You have all be­came par­ents mean­while and that is a big change.
Edu: We've been grow­ing up to­gether; we all have kids now and the same re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Our music has also changed, from Bed & Break­fast up to now. But none of this would have been pos­si­ble with­out play­ing music for the sake of it, ex­per­i­ment­ing and liv­ing all that naive pe­riod at the be­gin­ning.
Talk­ing about play­ing and par­ent­hood, you just cre­ated a new fes­ti­val in Girona called El Fes­ti­valot (June 6-7), for all the fam­ily
Edu: It was fan­tas­tic to see adults and kids en­joy­ing music to­gether. The idea was to ex­pose the chil­dren to music, from jazz to clas­si­cal, and it was a suc­cess. That's the power of music. When we were kids we used to like songs that we didn't know ex­actly what they meant but for us they were im­por­tant.
Are you going to re­peat it next year?
Joan Enric: For sure. Girona Ciu­tat de Fes­ti­vals, gave us a chance to do it, our idea was to have free con­certs all around Girona: Teatre Mu­nic­i­pal, Plaça In­de­pendència, and so on, and the city was the stage for this fes­ti­val, free con­certs every­where, so it was a good ex­pe­ri­ence.
How do you see your­selves in 10 years' time?
We still have ideas and things to say, so we will be still doing music if pos­si­ble and go on play­ing. There's noth­ing bet­ter in life than work­ing on some­thing you love and, if its de­pends on us, we will con­tinue doing it, but the au­di­ence will de­cide.
Thank you all for com­ing and have a great sum­mer!
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