Tarta Relena

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©Playa de Anza

Tarta Relena in front of a stone wall.

Tarta Relena

Vocal explorers Marta Torrella and Helena Ros take their audience on an adventure that ranges from a cappella to electronic. Tarta Relena once called their music “progressive Gregorian,” which is about as close to accurate as anything. In performance, even their breaths of air become part of the music, music that is as timeless as oral tradition itself.

media release: The Auricle experimental sound and music series presents Catalan vocal duo Tarta Relena at Arts + Literature Laboratory on Saturday, March 25, 2023 at 7pm. Tickets are $15 ($10 student/ALL member) in advance online at https://tartarelena.bpt.me, and $20 at the door for everyone. Doors open at 6:30pm.

Tarta Relena are Marta Torrella (voice and electronics) and Helena Ros (voice and electronics). Tarta Relena was born in 2016 as a project of two singers to explore a cappella the sonorities of different styles of vocal music. Far from wanting to create a stamp of the traditional and to define the Mediterranean, Tarta Relena wants to make its own a repertoire that goes from music of oral tradition to songs of authors that in one way or another are related to the geographical area of the Mediterranean. 

Tarta Relena sings from the perspective that what we call folklore is a living and moving repertoire. Therefore, this reality is moldable and can be reinterpreted with the instruments and sonorities that we now have within our reach. A key tool is the electronics with which they re-signify the melodies without leaving aside their origins. The study and knowledge of the path and the contexts that have given rise to these musics opens the doors of experimentation towards new meanings. In Tarta Relena's work there is also a desire to play at blurring the concept of authorship, bringing together anonymous traditional melodies and newly created songs under the same umbrella, treating them in the same way and placing oral transmission, the central element of tradition, at the centre. 

"Tarta Relena have made a feature out of their breathing, converting what most singers regard as a musical by-product into a captivating highlight of their highly rewarding debut album. This attention to detail is typical of Tarta Relena, if we can say anything is typical of two musicians who once dubbed their music “progressive Gregorian” and who tackle everything from traditional Georgian song to a composition by 12th century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen." --Ben Cardew, Pitchfork