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The musician and researcher from Donostia will present his latest CD Xuxurlak that includes 25 piano pieces.  Okiñena will begin his tour this Saturday and Sunday in Buenos Aires at the Maimonides University and at the Usina del Arte respectively, on a tour that will take him to San Miguel de Tucuman, San Juan, Punta del Este in Uruguay and North American cities like Reno, Miami and Chicago among other stops.  This article is by Itziar Altuna and appeared in the Diario Vasco. 

Itziar Altuna/Donostia-San Sebastian.  His latest work Xuxurlak is just about to be released bu Jose Okiñena already has his bags packed to travel to Argentina.  There he will perform several concerts that will alternate with lectures at several universities, where he will perform pieces that are included on this CD and will explain his research that he is doing to recuperate some of the works that have been included.  The second half of his tour in the US will begin in later November and move next year to New York, Canada and Japan.  “This project is the largest that I’m going to do,” Okiñena admits.

The CD contains 25 songs, 70 percent of which are unpublished.  Among these are the “Andante Doloros” one of the last songs by Aita Donostia (1886-1956), that Okiñena salvaged among his manuscripts given him some years ago by pianist, Felix Lavilla that has been defined as "a real jewel,” “vanguard,” and “very innovative for his time.”  “It was a challenge to reconstruct this work,” Okiñena said, who has come full circle with this composer since he already did a Ph.D. thesis on Aita Donostia and has already recorded all his work for piano.

The publication also includes Six Dances by Tomas Garbizu (1901-1989), six sonatas for Basque harpsichordists, including Juan Andres de Lombide (1945-1844), “Tres Bagatellas” by Pascual Aldave (1924-2013), and six pieces for young pianists by Felix Lavilla.  “I think it is pianism that was quite forgotten and it is a work that greatly enriches the repertoire for piano in the Basque Country.”  He explains that the name “Xuxurlak” (whispers in Basque) exemplifies the character of the project where he has recuperated “musical sighs that have been forgotten, these folkloric songs that have exclusively remained in oral sources, but that have been gathered by great composers and have arranged them for piano.”

Josu Okiñena has now begun the work of introducing this repertoire.  On Saturday he will do so at the Maimonides University in Buenos Aires, and on Sunday he will perform a recital at the Usina del Arte.  Next week he will travel to San Miguel de Tucuman and San Juan, in the north of Argentina, and on November 3^rd he will conclude his South American tour in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

He will then travel to the US where he will perform at the William A. Douglass Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno on November 16th, as part of its 50th anniversary celebration.  He will also perform in Miami and at the University of Jacksonville in Florida, as well as in Chicago.

International Tour

The researcher and pianist from Donostia will alternate his recitals with lectures, and masterclasses, where he will explain the “process I follow to interpret music and the possibilities that I have discovered in the works, because each interpreter understands it in a different way.”  A Master Professor of Methodology at Musikene in Donostia, the last few years he has been dedicated to the research of scientific fundamentals to explain the process he follows for interpretation.

The international tour to introduce the works included on Xuxurlak will continue in December in Central Europe in Zurich, Warsaw and Bucharest, and in February of next year he will return to North America to Carnegie Hall in New York and later to Ottawa, Canada.  In March he will perform in Donostia at the Victoria Eugenia Theater, where the composers of these works also performed these pieces.

He has also confirmed dates in Japan for fall of 2018, where they “have been very interested in this repertoire that is unknown to them.”  Okiñena acknowledges that Basque culture is better known at the ethnographic or ethno musical levels.  “Txalaparta or folklore is known, but not the work developed by the great artists who have been in the Basque Country and have left this great repertoire behind.”

He will soon embark on the ‘American Adventure,” and he is very excited and grateful for the support that he has received from various institutions including the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development, the Basque Government, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, Etxepare Basque Institute, and the Mikel Laboa Chair.  "This tour is a great challenge,” he concludes.

(Published 10-23-2017 in El Diario Vasco)