Ars Vulgaris Ensemble

Ars Vulgaris Ensemble is a Barcelona-based international collective founded by musicians from diverse cultural roots. The group explores the borderlands between cultured music and oral tradition through a living dialogue between styles, eras and geographies. Untold Cities was the ensemble’s first production, an imaginary journey through forgotten, submerged and invented cities, inner places where dreams, memories and music intertwine. In this special version, designed for In the Sounds of Places, Ars Vulgaris transports us eastward: from the Balkans to the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Klezmer, doina, hora, kopanitsa and sirto become stages in an itinerary between dance and exile, memory and transformation. These musics – like the peoples from which they come – never intended to stop in one place: they travel propelled by the human spirit, like a wind that crosses borders without asking permission. Each melody is an untold story, an echo that seeks its own space to vibrate.