The Figueres Composer Giving Our Next Production Its Voice
Every production begins with a meeting between what is already known and what has yet to be heard. For our next original score, that meeting takes place in Figueres, where composer and pianist Laia Casals is translating local memory, physical movement, and the energy of live performance into music for the stage.
Casals has spent years moving between concert halls, rehearsal rooms, schools, and small community projects. Her work is shaped by the belief that a score should do more than accompany a scene. It should create space, sharpen a gesture, reveal an emotion, and sometimes allow silence to speak.
Her collaboration with Figueres a Escena brings together the organisation’s performing arts programme, the atmosphere of Teatre El Jardí, and the close relationship between artists and audiences at Sala La Cate. The result will be a score made for this place, while remaining open to anyone who enters the theatre.
A Sound Shaped By Figueres
Casals grew up in the Alt Empordà and remembers first encountering music through a mixture of formal lessons and everyday sounds. The ringing of bicycles against pavement, voices carrying across a courtyard, the rhythm of market stalls being assembled, and the changing acoustics of old buildings all became part of her early listening.
Her musical education later took her through piano studies, composition workshops, and collaborations with theatre-makers. Yet she has never treated classical training and local experience as separate worlds. A carefully voiced piano chord can sit beside a folk rhythm, a recorded street sound, or the irregular pulse of footsteps on a wooden stage.
That blend is central to the upcoming production. Rather than writing a decorative soundtrack, Casals is developing a musical environment with its own dramatic direction. Themes will return in altered forms, instruments will change their emotional colour, and fragments of melody will appear as characters or ideas evolve.
From First Chords To The Stage
The score began with conversation rather than notation. During early sessions with the creative team, Casals listened to descriptions of the production’s movement, visual language, and emotional structure. She observed rehearsals before deciding which moments needed music and which would be stronger without it.
This process has led to a flexible composition. Some passages are tightly timed to choreography, while others leave room for performers to breathe and respond. The musicians will work closely with the stage team so that tempo can follow the action instead of forcing it into a fixed pattern.
Casals describes this as “writing with the room in mind.” Teatre El Jardí has a particular scale and warmth, while Sala La Cate offers a more intimate setting. The score is being designed to retain detail at close range, allowing a soft bow stroke, a muted percussion sound, or a quiet vocal line to remain meaningful.
Listening To Memory And Tradition
The composer’s research has included songs, dance rhythms, oral histories, and instruments connected with Catalan cultural life. She is not attempting to recreate a historical sound in a literal way. Instead, she is asking how inherited musical gestures can be transformed for a contemporary audience.
That approach reflects the wider spirit of Catalan traditions within Figueres a Escena’s programming. Local identity can be present through rhythm, language, celebration, and shared memory without becoming predictable or fixed. Casals’s score follows the same path, treating tradition as a living source rather than a museum piece.
A recurring musical phrase draws on the shape of a traditional dance pattern, though its tempo gradually shifts until it feels almost like a breath. Another passage uses layered plucked strings to suggest a public gathering heard from a distance. These references are subtle, inviting recognition without requiring specialist knowledge.
The score also makes room for contradiction. Bright melodic fragments may accompany moments of uncertainty, while a familiar rhythm can become unsettling when slowed down. In this way, the music reflects the complexity of belonging: comforting, challenging, personal, and shared.
The early creative brief can be understood through the elements below:
| Creative element | Role in the production | Musical response |
|---|---|---|
| Local memory | Connects the story with Figueres and the surrounding region | Repeated motifs shaped by Catalan rhythmic patterns |
| Movement | Gives the performers a musical partner on stage | Flexible tempi and phrases that respond to choreography |
| Intimacy | Keeps emotional detail audible in smaller spaces | Transparent instrumentation and carefully placed silences |
| Transformation | Allows familiar ideas to change as the story develops | Themes return in new keys, textures, and tempos |
| Participation | Builds a bridge between artists and audiences | Simple vocal and rhythmic gestures that feel accessible |
Building Music For Live Movement
One of the most demanding parts of the project is writing for bodies in motion. A theatre score must account for weight, balance, pauses, entrances, and the unpredictable timing of live performance. Casals is therefore composing in close contact with the performers, adapting sections as the production finds its physical vocabulary.
A single movement can require several musical possibilities. A scene may need a clear pulse during rehearsal, then a looser version once the performers have internalised the sequence. Casals is preparing alternate transitions and open-ended cues so the score can remain alive from one performance to the next.
Her instrumentation reflects this practical awareness. Piano and strings provide warmth and continuity, while hand percussion, small tuned instruments, and processed sounds create sharper edges. Some sounds will come from the stage itself, blurring the boundary between musical accompaniment and the world of the play.
The aim is balance. The score should support concentration without telling the audience exactly what to feel. Music can intensify a gesture, but it can also leave room for an actor’s expression, a dancer’s hesitation, or the audience’s own interpretation.
A Conversation With Young Performers
Casals’s relationship with education has also influenced the way she approaches this commission. Through workshops and informal sessions, she has seen how children and young people respond to rhythm before they begin worrying about technical correctness. Their instinctive use of repetition, contrast, and unexpected pauses has become a useful reminder for her own writing.
This connection is especially relevant to ATEB, Figueres a Escena’s theatre school for children, young people, and adults. Families exploring the programme can find practical information in this guide to ATEB classes, including how theatre training develops confidence, collaboration, and creative discipline.
The new score may include workshops where younger participants experiment with vocal textures, body percussion, or the sound of ordinary objects. These activities are not designed to simplify composition. They offer another way to understand how a performance is built, with every sound treated as a possible dramatic material.
For Casals, working near a theatre school creates a valuable exchange. Professional artists bring experience and structure, while emerging performers bring directness and curiosity. That exchange strengthens the cultural life around a production long before opening night.
What Audiences May Hear
Audience members can expect a score that moves between recognisable melody and atmospheric sound. Some passages will be immediately memorable, while others may register first as changes in energy, colour, or space. The music will be allowed to grow gradually rather than announcing every emotional turn.
There will also be moments of deliberate quiet. Casals sees silence as an active part of the composition, particularly in a theatre where the audience can hear a performer’s breath or the movement of a chair. Removing sound can focus attention just as powerfully as adding it.
The production will offer a chance to hear how a local artist interprets a shared environment without reducing it to a postcard. Figueres appears through texture and rhythm, through the relationship between old and new, and through the sense that a performance belongs to the people who gather around it.
That is what makes this commission significant for Figueres a Escena. An original score creates a record of a particular artistic moment, but it also opens a pathway for future collaborations between composers, performers, teachers, and audiences.
Ways To Encounter The New Work
- Attend the performance at Teatre El Jardí and listen for the recurring musical motifs as the story develops.
- Follow programme notes and artist conversations to discover how the score was shaped in rehearsal.
- Explore concerts, theatre, dance, cinema, circus, and family events across the Figueres a Escena network.
- Take part in ATEB activities to experience performance-making from inside the creative process.
The first notes are already connecting rehearsal room, theatre, and town. When the production reaches the stage, listen for the details that might otherwise pass unnoticed: a rhythm that recalls a local celebration, a melody changed by memory, or a pause that makes the room feel suddenly closer. Book your place with Figueres a Escena and hear Laia Casals’s new score become part of a live performance shared in real time.