Josep-Manel Vega is an unortodox self-made guitarist, composer and improviser. A contemporary jazz musician in his own way.
Born in Barcelona in 1965, he started studying musical language and harmony with his grandfather (Josep Baiget), classical guitar with several teachers (Jordi Belza, Mariano Capella, Guillem Pérez-Quer, William Waters, Danielle Kassner), contemporary music (Joan Munné, Xavier Prats) and flamenco (Manuel Castilla). However, it was by exploring on his own that he developed a personal musical language focused on improvisation, inspired by musicians such as Keith Jarret, Bill Frisell, Ralph Towner, Nguyên Lê, "high-risk" rock bands such as King Crimson or unconventional proposals such as The Bad Plus.
He had his first experiences in pop and rock bands during the nineties. In 1997, under the name CANVI DE SEGLE, he brought together various musicians (Enric Masriera, Josep Mª Fradera, Daniel Ortín, Carlos Belafonte, Ivo Sans and Ángel Gómez) in a project based on his own instrumental compositions. Two years later, the now disappeared Barcelona label Liquid Records released L'ESPAI, EL SILENCI I EL VENT, the band's first album with original acoustic and electric themes.
In 2002 he formed the acoustic trio FANG I MANS with flautist Andreu Brunat and clarinetist Teresa Vasco, a group that he left three years later to begin a first approach to his solo project IMPROVISING AROUND THE WORLD, which would not take its definitive shape until ten years later.
In 2007 he was commissioned to compose the music for the contemporary dance show LA SÍLIBA JAPONESA by choreographer Toni Gómez. Satoko Kojima and Teresa Belza, together with dancers from the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, premiered the performance. Josep-Manel Vega played the music live at its staging in Barcelona.
Josep-Manel Vega left town in 2008 and took up residence in Os de Balaguer, a small mountain village at the foot of Montsec, on the Aragón border. In the silence of the rural world, he explored the field of atonality and free solo improvisation. This experience was reflected in the albums UN SEIS Y UN CUATRO (free improvisation on Spanish guitar), XII MANTRAS (recorded in the Monastery of Les Avellanes, taking advantage of the impressive acoustics of it's church) and VILARS SUITE.
He performed several times with THREE TIGERS TRIO with Jordi Sánchez and Mariano Steimberg between 2010 and 2012, with a repertoire of compositions and improvisations for electric guitar, bass and drums. The trio's music was published years later in a recording made on May 2016 (PALLASSOS & MALABARS) with Carles Badal on drums.
In 2014 he returned to the acoustic format with a new repertoire that he plays solo, as a duo with double bassist Jordi Sánchez, in a trio with percussionist Ernest Martínez and in a quartet with Almudena Jambrina (oboe and English horn). For this project he builds a special guitar that he will later use in the performance of the suite BWV995 (Barcelona, 2016) together with double bass player Àlex Reviriego and drummer Ivo Sans, improvising freely from the score by Johann Sebastian Bach.
In the same year, he writes new music for JAZZ CIRCUS, a trio including Josep-Manel Vega on electric guitar, Jordi Sánchez on double bass and Carles Badal on drums. They schedule a series of regular concerts in Barcelona which, in the end, fail to attract the expected audience.
One of his most ambitious projects arrives in 2017. The trio LA NUU performs medieval songs and develops them through jazz, Indian music, improvisation and multiple apparently immiscible elements. A luxury line-up led by singer and harpsichordist Patricia Mora (Orquesta de RTVE, Real Filarmonía de Galicia, Capilla Real de Madrid) and tabla player Ramón Rodríguez, with Josep-Manel Vega on electric guitar. The result is a surprising mixture, extraordinarily beautiful, which, despite this, does not end up fitting in either early music festivals or jazz festivals. After a few performances without further significance, the trio disbanded in 2018.
During all this time, Josep-Manel Vega combined his artistic activity with teaching. Trained in various musical pedagogies (mainly Jaques-Dalcroze, but also Willems, Kodaly and Orff), he works as a music teacher in infant and primary schools and in music schools, including the prestigious Joan Llongueres Institute in Barcelona, a benchmark for active pedagogies in Spain. He collaborates regularly with Educational Services and Universities (University of Barcelona, University of Girona, Rovira i Virgili University, Ramon Llull University) by giving training courses and workshops for teachers in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. He published several articles on music didactics and education in general. He wrote the children's opera El rei que no tenia sentiments as well as songs, dances and poems for children. In 2013 he started the project Educació Musical Artesana (EMA), which brings together specialists from all over Catalonia. Simultaneously, he created the website GUITARRISTES in which he publishes several compositions and studies (more than 100 scores) that comprise an original training programme for classical guitarists that emphasises the most creative side of the instrument. It was described by the renowned professor of improvisation Emilio Molina, director of the Instituto de Educación Musical de Madrid, as "a great work of creation and arrangement of materials for guitar".
Josep-Manel Vega left teaching in 2018. During the following years, he resumed the IMPROVISING AROUND THE WORLD project and travelled to many countries, making more than twenty improvisations on the Spanish guitar in particularly inspiring places in Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Morocco, etc., all of them documented on video. This project was interrupted by the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Simultaneously, he publishes an anthology of poems in a bilingual edition (Pagès Editors / Editorial Milenio) which he presents in a poetic-musical show together with the popular Catalan actress Àngels Bassas. He writes songs for voice, harp and Spanish guitar, which will be performed together with Swiss singer and harpist Mia Ramer. The Sociedad General de Autores (SGAE) rewards this collaboration with a grant for its release on vinyl record (UNFINISHED LANDSCAPE). On the local radio station RÀDIO BALAGUER he presents a monthly radio programme in which he shares his experiences and reflections on the art of listening.
From November 2022 until July 2023, he performs countless "indoor" performances presenting IMPROVISING AROUND THE WORLD in a show in which he improvises on the Spanish guitar over video projections of the places where the project took place. He also organises open-air performances in unique spaces, where he shares the experience live with the audience.
Josep-Manel Vega's current proposal stems from a recording in February 2022 in which he explores as a soloist the ideas that will mark the course of his new production. During the following months, he explored different formats (solo, duo, trio) in several approaches based on similar paradigms. It will be from a recording with the double bass player Ignasi González, made on 16/12/2022, when the artistic concept of the new project will be definitively defined.
"This album has been an awareness of what I have really been doing for the last few years: the construction of a vehicle through which to channel a need to give myself through music that has been latent since my early childhood." - Josep-Manel Vega
After the release of DUO/SOLO (2023), the concept and the music are ready: a flexible proposal, adaptable to different formats, suitable for both an auditorium and the intimacy of a club. However, Josep-Manel Vega begins to work on an even more ambitious version: the symphonic format. He writes music for string orchestra, in an arrangement designed to embrace what may happen during a live performance, combining the warmth of the strings of a "classical" ensemble with the freshness of the improvisations of a jazz ensemble.
In April 2023 he accepts a commission from the Bells Museum of Catalonia to offer a musical performance involving the museum's bells. The opportunity was taken to premiere an adaptation of those orchestral arrangements, in a reduction for string quartet, jazz trio and bells. The concert, held on 29/04/2023 with musicians from the Camerata Granados and the Orquestra Simfònica Julià Carbonell from Lleida, together with Genís Bagès (drums) and Mante Reixach (bass), as well as Josep-Manel Vega on guitar, shows the suitability of this unusual combination of instruments and anticipates the extraordinary results that can be achieved with a complete string section.