4th edition · Belmonte · Salas · Grado · Somiedo · Llanes
Adar, a different festival to revitalise the rural world
The 4th edition of the summer event will bring music, installations, dance and visual art to villages in Belmonte, Salas, Somiedo, Grado and Llanes from 8 to 18 August.
The fourth edition of the Adar festival, a cultural initiative that seeks to revitalise the rural world through the arts and music in all their forms —especially those linked to new technologies and contemporary creation—, begins tomorrow in Grado. On this occasion the activities will run until Sunday 18 August at various locations across the municipalities of Belmonte de Miranda, Salas, Grado, Pola de Somiedo and Llanes. Concerts and micro-concerts, art installations, performances and dance make up the programme of this gathering, which will close with a popular festivity featuring cider and empanada in Leiguarda (Belmonte), the place where this venture originated and where the Association for the Development of the Arts in Rural Areas, its driving force, is based.
As the musician and composer Guillermo Laporta, creator of Adar together with the performer Josefina Urraca, recalls, the project was born four years ago at the height of the pandemic, when the two settled in a village in Belmonte de Miranda:
We sensed there was a need —even if no one knew it existed— to connect the rural world with today’s arts and to use them as a means of revitalising it. We knew many artists who would be delighted to come to places like this, and with that idea we put together the first edition.
Since then the festival has grown and forged its own identity, built on two strands. On one hand, the artist residencies at the Leiguarda base —which has a small rehearsal room and accommodation— where different creators come to produce works that are later presented at the festival. The other pillar is Adar en Ruta (Adar on the Road), which takes the various proposals of music, visual arts and other forms of expression to rural communities across Asturias.
This edition will feature musicians of recognised international standing such as Jone de la Fuente (violin), Almudena Rivas (viola), Natania Hoffman (cello), Mario Molina (piano), Guillermo Laporta (flute) and Josefina Urraca (piano). The festival presents a repertoire that includes works by Mozart, Debussy, Vivaldi and contemporary composers such as Andrea Casarrubios. Also present will be the North American creator Sarah K. Williams with an art installation with which the dancers Rebeca Martín Tassis and Izar Gayo will interact. For her part, the University of Oviedo researcher Raquel López Fernández will provide the element of scientific transfer and cultural mediation, interpreting and contextualising the works presented.
The programme, which begins tomorrow with the opening of the art installations in Grado, continues on Monday the 12th with a concert at the Monastery of San Antolín de Bedón (Llanes). The following day there will be another at the Monastery of Cornellana, and on Wednesday the 14th at the market of La Pola de Somiedo. The activities move on Friday the 16th to Leiguarda with two micro-concerts at Adar’s base and at the Hórreo Casantos, ending with a sound walk and cider. Live music will arrive on Saturday the 17th at the Miranda-Valdecarzana Palace in Grado, a micro-concert at the Capilla de los Dolores with a set design by Sarah K. Williams, and an installation of hers at the Fontela Palace. The closing will take place on Sunday the 18th in Leiguarda with a recital in the surroundings of the church and a popular festivity.
The festival’s aim, Laporta stresses, is to “bring the arts and classical or contemporary music to places where it is not expected”, a hallmark that distinguishes this event from similar ones, since as he notes:
We are not looking for the concept of a summer festival that draws people from everywhere, something that here could be almost counterproductive. We aim to revitalise and activate the rural territory itself, involving the local population in it. Something, by the way, that is far from easy, and that is why we are grateful for the support that Caja Rural gives to the project and the Department of Culture for funding it.
The initiative’s horizon: to keep growing in the future with new ideas and new spaces.
Original text published in El Comercio.