Show 1052: A Brief Tale: Bach in Seville (Tea FM)

In the spring of 1745, Johann Sebastian Bach, weary from years of composing and performing across Germany, embarked on an unexpected journey south. Rumors of the vibrant music and golden light of Andalusia had reached Leipzig, whispered by travelers and fellow musicians. Intrigued and seeking inspiration, Bach set his sights on Seville.

Upon arriving, the composer was struck by the city’s intoxicating mix of Moorish architecture, orange blossom-scented air, and the ever-present rhythm of flamenco echoing through cobbled streets. He was welcomed by local musicians, curious about the German master whose music, though foreign to them, stirred something familiar in their souls.

One evening, in a small courtyard lit by lanterns, Bach joined a gathering of Spanish guitarists and singers. They played bulerías and soleás, their hands moving like fire across strings and palms. Bach, fascinated, responded with improvisations on his clavichord, echoing the passionate melodies with Baroque flourishes. The music transcended language. In those moments, the sacred and the earthly met.

Before leaving Seville, Bach climbed the Giralda tower. From its heights, he gazed across the red rooftops and the Guadalquivir River, listening to the distant strum of guitars. He did not write down what he heard—but in his final compositions, there would linger a warmth, a rhythm, and a hint of Spain that no one could quite explain.

And so, though unrecorded in history, Seville left its mark on the master of counterpoint—just as his music left echoes in the alleys of Andalusia.

Based on the show “Improbach. The Intangible Infinite”
Dance–Choreography–Texts: Alba Lucera
Piano: Pierre Mancinelli

Sound Design: Chuse Fernandez

Each week one member of the Radia Network produces a show for all the others. The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late-night club discussions, and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making––radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio, is what Radia does.

It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose: being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.

Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time, and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 22 partners in 14 countries and growing all the time.

Radia Stations

* Duuu (Paris, FR)
* ∏node (Mulhouse, Paris, FR)
* Diffusion (Sydney, AU)
* JET FM (Nantes, FR)
* Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
* Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
* Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
* Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
* Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ)
* Radio Panik (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT)
* Radio Student (Ljubljana, SI)
* radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE)
* Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)
* RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL)
* Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE)
* Resonance FM (London, UK)
* Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK)
* TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES)
* Usmaradio (San Marino, SM)
* Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)

Affiliates

* Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)
* Mobile Radio (Ürzig, DE)
* Radioart106 (Haifa, PS48)

More information at http://radia.fm