VerdCel

VerdCel is a Mediterranian pop-rock band coming from both Alcoi and Barcelona in the Catalan Countries (Catalonia/Valencian Country/Balearic Islands).

VerdCel is an amalgam of music, image and action. A creative team driven since 2000 by the strong will and enthusiasm of Alfons and Daniel Olmo. Musically speaking, the band goes beyond the traditional songwriting and approaches modern influences in combination with the purest Mediterranean roots.
With an accurate mise-en-scene usually followed by live video projection, the band presents a performance which outstrips the singularity of their songs.

VerdCel is committed to a musically strong and emotional multidisciplinary show, where several disciplines such as “videojocking” or drama converge and turn their concerts into a perfectly balanced audiovisual event with communication and interaction with the audience as cornerstones.

The band has successfully performed in numerous tours and gigs across the Catalan Countries, various locations from Spain and several incursions in Europe (Sardinia, Perpignan, Liverpool, Cork). Their work has been honored with different awards: Ovidi Montllor (best album), Cantigas de Mayo (best song), Enderrock Magazine (audiovisual performance, records and cover design), among others.
Two basic references in VerdCel's art are the Catalan visual poet Joan Brossa and the Valencian singer Ovidi Montllor. As stated by Alfons from VerdCel, "the will for self-offering to the song can take different shapes... commitment to your own principles, to the place, language and culture you live in, the landscape, the environment, the people and your day to day, the human experiences, personal growth, emotions and feelings, the fight against the social, economic and territorial differences, and so on. The way you express yourself is equally diverse and complete. We have always considered all these issues as transcendent to go on: different aesthetics, cultural trends either deeper or minoritary, explicit or massive, poetical... all of them".

The VerdCel project was born more than seven years ago. From the very beginning, the band’s scenic performance has implemented theater and image into the stage. The creation of their first show "La cordeta s/e" (with the help of the Valencian actor Juli Cantó) drove the band to record their first EP in autumn 2003, "On està el Lloc?" (PAE, 2004). During the same period, the band also presented a new show focused on the work by one of their most important artistic influencers, the song writer Ovidi Montllor (Des d'Hom fins el Món).

The VerdCel creative team has five studio albums behind it, four of which hold the cd-book-dvd format, as well as over 400 performances in different stages. A unique exquisite approach that has received high praise from both critics and audiences.

In March 2006 VerdCel presented their most ambitious work “País Viatge” (Cambra Records, 2006), the band's first studio album, a book-cd-dvd that included music, poetry, illustrations and a comic that became the leitmotif of the work. The show, as a movie, includes accurate video-projections that move beyond the live music. In their second work, the musicians from Alcoi offered a poetical defense of their territory and landscapes, with which they successfully toured across their land and beyond. The work received numerous awards and was considered by the critics among the 25 best albums of 2006.

In its second studio album, “Sàmara” (2008), VerdCel introduced time as a new variable or dimension. This time, they focused in telling a story, the story of their origins, through the life of an old woman in her nineties. In this poetical defence of an identity in its whole meaning, the band also referred to all the important facts that happened in the twentieth Century in an industrial town. This woman is the witness of a town that grew up in a different context, just as she did, surrounded by mountains and harrassed by the Spanish Civil War and its fatal consequences.

VerdCel’s third work PetjAdeS was the first full tribute and recognition to the work of another artist, Raimon, pioneer and master of Catalan 60s phenomenon known as "Nova Cançó". The album includes 15 covers tributing the first Catalan song writer the band ever listened to, together with a short film, two documentaries from the 60s and a comic that tells the essential points in the life of the artist.

The band’s most recent work “Els dies del Saurí” (The Days of the Dowser) is the most personal album by VerdCel. A work that maintains the band's own label, unique and special, but in which the musicians also flirt with pop-rock, giving their songs a wider number of nuances that enrich their sound. The album contains a comic book and a CD with 14 songs and is the forth LP that follows the VerdCel way of working, which implies the combination of different disciplines.

Discography and Performances:

-Demo Recording "Bagatge d'una Fusió" (2000).
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