Often an underappreciated instrument, the bagpipe has been slowly but noticeably making its way into the cracks of exploratory music through artists like Brìghde Chaimbeul or Vasco Alves - continuing the expansive vision once opened up by Yoshi Wada. It is within this same spectrum that Carme López’s work can be placed. A researcher of Galicia’s oral music tradition, Carme channels this heritage into her bagpipe compositions, not to merely perpetuate the canon, but to grant it an entirely new existence - one that ventures into heartfelt territories, fully aware of the surrounding space and time. In her music, from the circulating air slow-moving drones and suspended tones emerge, forming elegiac melodies, sighs and breaths that detach themselves from the instrument’s usual paths, instead embracing its full timbral, poetic, and harmonic potential.
[Within the scope of tekhnē, co-funded by the European Union]
Photo: Eva Pombo