The Voodoo Children

The Voodoo Children Collective is a group led by the Mallorcan composer and arranger Toni Vaquer; a changing part that created Vaquero by the need to capture his original music, with the scoop of writing in a personalized way by the musicians who are in the formation of the band at all times.

During the spring of 2020, due to the confinement caused by the COVID-19, the author has written a repertoire of eight songs. They are a tribute to the young emerging musicians of the Mallorcan scene, which has led to the emergence of an increasingly active and dense improvised music scene in the Balearic Islands in recent years.

The precedent for this project is a concert at the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival in 2018 by what was called the "Mallorca Jazz Collective". It was the first time Vaquero mixed the classical Big Band with a string ensemble and was able to experiment with this kind of orchestration freely and actively. Since then, Vaquero has exported this same concept to the Gran Ensemble of the Conservatori del Liceu, which he has conducted for the last few years.

As Toni Vaquero himself comments: "The repertoire was conceived in April with the first piece ("Post Apocalyptic World"); inspired by and channelling the loneliness that the Covidien-19 crisis has generated in us, especially the social and cultural collectives. It is a tribute to the power of affection and friendship, so necessary in these moments lived as a species. "

As a result of the first theme, the idea developed into other pieces dedicated to musical profiles of our island, with the creation of works where these personalities have a custom-made frame, such as Carlos Medina, Pep Garau, Maria Antonia Gili, Mique Ángel Rigo, etc.

The musical content is a mixture of written music and improvised music, with diverse orchestrations, taking advantage of the wide sound possibilities that the band has, both on an electric and chamber scale. The aesthetic idea of this music is to intermingle the different sounds without any different sonorities without any prejudice, trying to be inclusive and respectful with all genres and styles.