Osmosi · Poema sonor i visual per a big band i dibuix en transformació

Of all the artistic manifestations, the ones that attract and fascinate me the most (apart from music) are the visual arts. For a long time I had wanted to do a project in which the two disciplines, music and visual arts, interacted. So, I had to find the visual element that would dialogue with my music and I immediately thought of the cartoonist Joma as a traveling companion. I have known Joma for quite some time. He is an artist very sensitive to the musical event and I have always admired his visual and poetic imagination. I proposed the project to him and he quickly accepted it with enthusiasm.

The result of this artistic alliance is Osmosis, an interdisciplinary work in which music for big band dialogues with a visual poem in eight movements created with the technique of drawing in transformation (stop motion animation). The music, inspired by the proposed images, is interpreted simultaneously with the projection of the eight clips. Between each of the eight projected movements, several soloists of the big band, in an improvisational dialogue between soloist and illustrator, develop a short musical motif in the manner of a leitmotif. In these seven moments of connection, which we have called Deambulations, the drawing is done live, on canvas, on stage. This leitmotif appears orchestrated for all the instruments of the big band at the end of the work.

The premiere of Osmosi took place at the Teatre Auditori de Granollers on March 11, 2023 as part of the 33rd Jazz Granollers Festival.

I would like to thank Joma in particular for agreeing to collaborate on this adventure. It has been a great pleasure to immerse myself in their world and let myself be carried away by their always suggestive and inspiring images.

I would also like to thank all the musicians who have brought this music to life and especially my colleagues in the artistic direction of the Barcelona Art Orchestra: Joan Vidal, Lluc Casares and Néstor Giménez, who have supported this project at all times. I will never be grateful enough to Néstor Giménez for all the effort invested in the recording, editing and production of the music of Osmosi. And finally, I would like to thank Jordi Pujol from Fresh Sound for having valued and trusted my work, once again.

—Lluís Vidal


Osmosis is a dream. It is the embodiment of a desire that has accompanied me throughout my career as a cartoonist: to make my drawings move and, above all, make them sound. I have gone to many concerts to draw with the dream of capturing not so much the musicians' gestures but the music itself. And I have drawn live with the drive of musicians, improvisers or not, pushing, provoking the image and endowing it with temporality. That is why, when Lluís Vidal proposed that I undertake this adventure, I signed up without hesitation. I owe it to him that the drawings not only sound but also have such a rich voice that it takes nineteen musicians to say what Lluís Vidal has been able to hear! I am deeply grateful to all of them, conductor and orchestra.

Faced with the challenge of providing images for the project, I once again turned to Elias Canetti. The reading and rereading of his Notes, his thoughts, are the basis of the proposed images. How do we position ourselves in the Universe? How do we position ourselves in relation to others and ourselves? This is the subject of the visual poem. In this booklet you will find some clarifying quotes from the thinker, along with some images. The images, however, are as free to the text as the music is to the drawings. I live with music!

—Joma

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Press reviews

"La colaboración entre solistas consolidados y grandes formaciones orquestales se ha convertido en una tendencia visible en el jazz ibérico contemporáneo. Un ejemplo reciente es Boreal, grabación de Perico Sambeat con la Orquesta Jazz de Matosinhos, de la que hablamos recientemente en estas páginas. En esta misma línea se sitúa  el nuevo proyecto del célebre pianista gallego Abe Rábade, que desarrolla su música con el Eixo do Jazz Ensemble, un conjunto luso-gallego de formación media —nueve músicos capaces de generar una sonoridad de gran amplitud—.

Ve ahora la luz el último trabajo del veterano pianista Lluís Vidal, sustento musical de un ejercicio multidisciplinar de hace unos años: Osmosi, junto a la Barcelona Art Orchestra. Aunque concebido como espectáculo visual en vivo, su riqueza sonora hace que también merezca ahora una edición en CD. El proyecto se definía como un “poema visual en ocho movimientos” que combinaba la técnica del dibujo en transformación (animación stop motion) creada por el dibujante Josep M. Rius “JOMA”, con las composiciones y arreglos de Vidal, y con la ciudad de Barcelona como hilo conductor. A la inversa del cine, donde la banda sonora se compone inspirándose en las imágenes, aquí son las imágenes las que se inspiran en la banda sonora.

Pero centrémonos en la parte musical de la grabación: la belleza compositiva de Lluís Vidal y, sobre todo, su faceta como arreglista. Los temas respiran un color particular, un discurso entre festivo y lúdico que, por momentos, evoca la pluma de Carla Bley. Los pasajes en grupo van intercalados de improvisaciones solistas —en el directo, el dibujante improvisa sus trazos siguiendo la música—, entre los que sobresalen intérpretes como el saxofonista Lluc Casares, Álvaro Ocón a la trompeta o el ya mencionado Sambeat, aportando al conjunto una paleta sonora tan rica como la visual."

—Alejandro Cifuentes (Noviembre, 2025)
Scherzo Magazine, Jazz