Giesta

This weekend in Utrecht! “El camino se hace cantado” (the path is made by walking) by Giesta.

📍Saturday 21st of March 15:30 Augustinuskerk, Utrecht

With an historical performance background, Joana and Irene tap into the overlap between early western notated music and oral traditions and reinvent them, often incorporating theatrical and storytelling elements.

This program includes a special arrangement of a Cantiga de Santa María. These 13th century songs tell miracles performed by the virgin Mary through beautiful melodies and many strophes in an old language called Galico-Portuguese. Modern day performers of this repertoire face this question: how to tell the story, which is in this largely unknown language, while preserving the mesmerising melody and form?

In this case, Joana re-worked one of these cantigas making the story its protagonist and arranging the music in a way that supports the plot and brings it closer to our 21st century understandings.

👸A Madre de Déus tant’ há en si gran vertude, Cantigas de Santa María, Codex Principal de El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial outside Madrid (c. 1250) 👸

We will be performing the full program on the 21st of March in Utrecht. Thank you to the Society of Saint James for the invitation!

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Thank you and for making the recording of this video possible.
The full livestream can be found in our bio.

“El camino se hace cantado” (the path is made by walking) is a music program about phenomenon of pilgrimage, which has percolated in the Iberian Peninsula throughout centuries.
From the well-known Camino de Santiago to the smallest of romerias, people have been walking
for spiritual and devotional reasons, for as long as our written sources can inform us.

Giesta performs two arrangements of traditional music from Portugal and Spain which is sung during this shorter pilgrimages, the Portuguese romarias or Spanish romerias.

We will be performing the full program on the 🌼21st of March in Utrecht🌼. Thank you to the Society of Saint James for the invitation!

🚶‍♀️Senhora Santa Combinha, Canto de Romeiros - Domingo de Espírito Santo, Vouzela-Viseu, Cancioneiro Popular Português by Michel Giacometti (1981)

🚶‍♀️Canto a la Virgen de la Soterraña, Santa María de Nieva, Cancionero de Castilla la Vieja by Agapito Marazuela (1932)

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Thank you and for making the recording of this video possible.
The full livestream can be found in our bio.

Celebrating International Women’s Day

As part of our research for Shadows Casting Light, we read:

Witchcraze: A New History of European Witch Hunts by Anne Barstow

We learnt about the sociological factors behind the witch hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries and many stories of individual women. These stories inspired to write a poem in their homage, from which we created 7 Witches / 7 Martyrs.

In this piece we place christian female martyrs alongside the so-called witches, both victims of similar atrocious violence, yet remembered very differently today.

Here we remember Chiara Signorini, accused in 1539, whose story appears in the chapter “From Healers to Witches. Folk healers were often targets in witch-hunts.

Chiara was asked by her landlady, to perform a “spell” to improve her health, as Margherita was paralyzed and bedridden. At first she improved, but when her condition worsened again, Chiara was accused of witchcraft.

In trial, Chiara declared that she interceded only through the Virgin Mary in her healing practices. A century earlier she might have been considered a mystic, but in this increasingly rational time her spirituality seemed too abstract. As Barstow writes, “Chiara did not know the language of her ecclesiastical judges.”

As she refused to confess to witchcraft, Chiara was subjected to the st*****do, a common torture in the witch trials. Under torture she admitted to worshipping the Devil, only to deny it once it stopped.

She was condemned to life imprisonment, a light sentence compared to the fate of the other women whose stories we evoke in our piece. They were burned at the stake and some even publicly tortured.

Today is International Women’s Day. Violence against women is far from eradicated: according to the UN, nearly one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives.

Today and every day, let’s leave the flowers in the ground. Instead, let’s speak about these issues with our families, friends, and communities, and educate boys (and girls) to respect women’s bodies, to recognise signs of inequality and fight for an equal safe world for everyone.

‘Shadows casting light’ in Basel, Switzerland

Almost two weeks ago we performed our latest program for the first time in Basel, in Switzerland.

Thank you Zum Hohen Dolder for hosting us in such a wonderful room.

Here is a sneak peek of our concert with:
‘Donna fallante’, 14th century Italian Ballata ‘Se ben ena Virgen fiar’ arranged by
‘Teach Me’, composed by
‘O Vos Omnes’ traditional portuguese, arranged by

We are performing soon again:
21st of March, Utrecht (The Netherlands)

More info soon!

8th March at 8pm - Soon, soon, soon, new video coming out!

We leave you with another short piece to open up your curiosity.

Our arrangement is based on a traditional Portuguese song with a very specific function. Can you guess what it is about?

with Irene Sorozabal Moreno, Joana Guiné,
and Abel Andrade on video, sound and editing.

And March will be full of many other good things including:

Folklore Days organized by Giesta, in
20th, 21st and 22nd of March

8th March at 8pm - Save it in your agenda!

We are launching a new video and here is a short fragment to open your curiousity.
What is it about? Can you guess?

with Irene Sorozabal Moreno, Joana Guiné
and Andrade on video, sound and editing

March will be full of many other good things including:

Folklore Days oganized by Giesta, in Splendor
20th, 21st and 22nd of March