Eduardo Trassierra playing guitar with headphones in the olive grove at La Aceitera

La Aceitera · Bollullos de la Mitación, Seville · 21 April 2023

The performance

Eduardo Trassierra presented his second album, El Bosque Suspendido, in a flamenco guitar recital for a small group of people.

The record moves through different flamenco styles and forms.

Trassierra (Villaverde del Río, Seville, 1982) came to wider attention in 2002, when he won the Giraldillo del Toque for young performers at the 12th Seville Flamenco Biennial. Since then he has worked as a soloist and composed the music for Rocío Molina’s productions.

The concert began at 8pm. The bar opened an hour earlier, and dinner with cante followed the recital.

The space

The fields of La Aceitera, a creation space in Bollullos de la Mitación. The recital did not take place in any building, but out in the olive grove.

The audience walked in along a dirt track between the olive trees and sat on rush chairs spread across the ground, with no stage and no raked seating. The performance was set at dusk, in spring, with the grass high and the grove yet to be harvested.

Two attendees with wireless headphones walking among the olive trees

The challenges

The site has no mains electricity. The olive grove sits well away from the buildings and there is no connection point anywhere on the ground.

The whole system ran on solar power, using panels and batteries.

The technical position was set up in the open air, on a table among the olive trees.

Sound control desk set up in the open air in the olive grove

The listening

The concert was heard through one hundred wireless headphones, fed by a single transmitter. There were no loudspeakers.

Volume control is individual. The mix is the same for everyone: what each person decides is the level they hear it at.

Audience with wireless headphones listening to the recital seated in the olive grove

Installation

One transmitter for one hundred receivers, covering the stretch of olive grove occupied by the audience.

The guitarist played at ground level, with no platform, and the audience arranged around him on chairs and on the earth itself.

The guitarist playing with his back to the camera before the audience seated on the ground

Credits

Eduardo Trassierra — guitar
Javier Álvarez — sound support
Roberto Martínez — images
El Mandaíto Producciones — production

In collaboration with the Bollullos de la Mitación Town Council.

Photographs: Bea Vaz