Sílvia Pérez Cruz: There are people who play very well, but who are not worth it humanly

Barcelona"From the depths of the seas to the celestial heavens". This is the conceptual journey that Silvia Pérez Cruz (Palafrugell, 1983) takes on the album Oral_Abisal (Sony, 2026), which is released this Friday: dual repertoire and a new display of musical resources. There is the very fine work of a string quartet and the magnificent opulence of horn and percussion arrangements. There is the solitary voice and the choral energy. And there is, above all, the confirmation of an artist who continues to explore musical and emotional limits,

Listening to the new songs, do you feel different?

— By voice or by attitude?

In summary.

— Yes, I guess so, but I always feel like I'm leaving. Why do you say that?

A few days ago at the album preview at the Liceu, I had the feeling that the new songs reflected the need for a new beginning after how you emptied yourself on the tour of the album Toda la vida, un día.

— I don't know. When I closed the concerts of Toda la vida, one day at the Grec Festival, I finished them with total fulfillment. Then I did Lentamente [2024] with Juan Falú, which was returning to intimacy and not thinking about anything; it was pure interpretation, going to the animal. Then we made the album with Salvador Sobral, with compositions by others. In the meantime, I have been composing, because I always compose, as a need... Are you talking about the compositions, the production, or the live performance?

For everything. For example, All my life, one day was an almost autobiographical album. Now, on the other hand, you look more outwards.

— There are the two perspectives. Oral_Abisal has this duality: looking very inward and looking very outward. They are all autobiographical, with more fantasy or with less. They are different pains and joys. I ended up at peace, and now I continue in a very quiet peace. I am very happy with what I have done. I don't need to do anything more than express myself as best as I can with the tools I have. And I see it as a continuation within my way of understanding life. There is a very similar search: going to the extremes and looking for connections there.

It surprised me that at the concert at the Liceu you didn't play any song from Toda la vida, un día.

— It would be eternal...

You did make some other albums.

— But not many. It also depends on the live performance and the emotion, and on studying the energy curve. But songs from before, which ones did we do? Mechita, Gallo rojo and Mañana... Since I don't have hits, I don't feel that kind of obligation to play certain songs.

You also covered the version ofHymne à l’amour, by Édith Piaf, perhaps because you had been playing at the Olympia in Paris?

— Yes, just for that. I mixed it with the Little Viennese Waltz...

Did you find ghosts of the past there, at the Olympia?

— Well, perhaps I would say yes, especially at the end, when I was singing Ne me quitte pas, by Jacques Brel. I was tremendously excited to go to a place where so many performers I admire have performed. And you do notice that the walls have a memory. Just like when you play in a new place and you notice the walls don't know how to vibrate yet, at the Olympia you notice they have vibrated a lot. I wanted to do Ne me quitte pas because, when I had done the play Ella y yo with Julio Manrique, I sang that song with a staging that recalled the Olympia, with a red curtain. Just the day before the concert in Paris, we decided we would do it. And luckily we did, because the emotion was very great. There were a few seconds when tears welled up and I allowed myself to think: "Silvia, how are you? And where are you?". I felt all the memory of the Olympia.

This concentrated emotion you achieve in different musical formats. For example, at the concert in the Liceu, it happened both when you played as a quartet and later in the coral suite Mar de na Catalina. How do you experience seeing the audience's emotion?

— Everything begins on stage. For example, in Mar de na Catalina there is a power. In such an individualistic, solitary world, suddenly feeling the strength of the collective, of all those women singing, has a very great symbolic force. Now, at 43 years old, I have realized that I am much more sensitive than I thought, and that I have a much greater capacity for work than I thought. In my work there is an introspective part, but I also have the need to discover and care for to build what each one will do. In fact, the last thing I think about is the voice, which is the most emotional part.

In concerts there are moments when you explicitly act as a conductor: you position yourself with your back to the audience to direct the musicians.

— Yes, this is very precious. I like it a lot. There is something about connecting with myself and with everything else: "Yes, I am a little further ahead, but without you I do not exist." Of course I can sing alone, but there is a beauty that comes out precisely because we are all together.

Regarding the composition and arrangements, on the new album have you tried things you hadn't tried before?

— Compositively, Oral and Abisal are very different. Oral has many more harmonies, it's much more guitar-driven, song-like, with chords I didn't like before. I used to play a lot with open strings, and now I've found a taste for these more bossa nova or jazz chords. On the other hand, Abisal is much simpler, with very few chords, and much more directional and trance. And the way of arranging is much more different. For example, in the studio, I would give the horns a part and tell them: "This note, this note, this chord. Can you do this melody?". A melody that perhaps I had written with the piano. But suddenly you hear the instrument and you feel a timbre, like in Capitana, where while testing the sound, a high note came out that sounded beautiful. And then I went to the piano to create the melody. With the string quartet, we work a lot together, with great precision. For example, the song Abisal has a dissonance that if one person plays it louder it doesn't sound right; and if you remove it, it lacks a certain rawness that it needs. Or we work to find the volume at which a note should be played for it to work. It's very fine work.

Abyssal is the song where you reverberate your voice the most?

— It's not reverb, it's two voices, with that thing in the middle that you don't quite know where it is. I composed it over a song by Marina Herlop that I really like. It has something very directional, of not moving the voice.

Speaking of placing your voice... In El golpe bajo you place it in various spots, because you change the way you sing throughout the song.

— It's like more recited at the beginning. It has this attitude of pulling back and hesitating. And then it goes to something a little more familiar, I don't know if it's flamenco or singer-songwriter. I always pull back, I like it a lot. But here I force it. It's nice that he plays the guitar, because you understand that I'm holding this tempo, but that I'm hesitating backwards.

You hesitate a lot in this song. You explained that it's all fiction, but that you had it saved for a long time. Did you want to make a song like this, with this amount of raw and fun spite at the same time?

— One of the things that I find hardest is getting angry and setting boundaries. But at 43, I am learning that it's also nice to get angry. Yes, I could make an album of angers. I had never thought of it, but I love it. Like Paquita la del Barrio's. Accumulated angers, right? Oh, look, excellent.

Don't the betrayals weigh on you so much anymore?

— Zero. I also suppose that when they can be sung, they no longer weigh anything and can be transformed into something symbolically interesting. In the concert repertoire it works very well because it is very fresh, and a bit of lightness enters well between so much intensity. Jorge Drexler almost sang it, this one. He wanted him to sing it and he liked it a lot, but he was immersed in promoting the album and couldn't do it.

Rosalía, in one of the April concerts at Palau Sant Jordi, greeted you.

— Yes, he said my name. "Sílvia, Sílvia Pérez Cruz". It makes me laugh a lot, when my surnames stick so close to me.

On Rosalía's album in the song La rumba del perdón you and Estrella Morente collaborate. I interpreted it as a recognition of a lineage to which you and Morente belong, who are a great influence on her. But, as Estrella Morente explained, who complained about the final result, it is true that your voices are heard very little.

— Yes, this is the question of these days...

Do you agree with what Estrella Morente said? How did you experience it?

— There are beautiful things to say. I agree with you, that there was a will to recognize the lineage, a chain of voices.

It's something you also do at concerts when you recognize the mastery of Carme Canela.

— Yes, I love that, I think it's very important. I don't know if you know the story. Two years ago Rosalía came to see me at a concert in Los Angeles and we had a lovely chat. And in September 2024 I dreamed that I was recording with a symphony orchestra and putting Enrique Morente's stuff and electronic drums on it. I sent her a message. "Rosalía, look, I dreamed that, that there was a symphony orchestra, and so on...". And she replied: "I can't believe it, I'm actually recording that. You are connected!". And a few months later she told me: "Sílvia, I think it's a sign, you have to be there, on the album". And she told me she was making a song that I would really like and in which Estrella Morente was already involved.

For a dream.

— Yes, I understand that the will is as you say: to honor the voices that have inspired her. In fact, I recently saw a video where Rosalía says that her favorite singers are Estrella and me, and I didn't know it! What an honor, what a thrill! For the song, each of us recorded separately. She only gave me one day's notice, and I did a lot of work. I studied it, because this song is very long, to learn all the turns and all the complexity. But, well, I did it with all my love.

Very little remains, in the definitive song.

Yes, she warned us before the album came out, and I told her: ¿e¡Please, can't you put a little more?¿e¡. There was a part I really liked about the arrangements, she had done some vocals that I imagined could sound very beautiful. And she told me: ¿e¡No, Sílvia, it's just that all the collaborations are like this, small¿e¡. And, well, if Björk had said yes, I thought: thank you for putting me on the list of these names. But, well, we were warned. And then the interviews with Estrella came out, and I understood what she could feel. I sent a message to both of them explaining what I felt with the will to take care of ourselves and learn the things that can make us feel better. I think Rosalía did it with the will you mentioned, and that perhaps now she would do it differently, because when you have to do so many things... the more ambition, the more open fronts there are, and it's very difficult to take care of everything. I can talk to her, to both of them, and I understand them. And I am at peace. Looking forward to us singing together one day, though.

I would like you to explain to me what Marta Roma, Carlos Montfort and Bori Albero, the trusted trio, represent to you.

— Pure love. These people are very important. Beyond music, they represent the values I like. There are many disappointments in life, people who play very well but are not worth it humanly. That there is a lot of ego, there is also a lot of fear, and with fear and insecurity one attacks the other. And I am not like that. Now I can say it. I work on some values, and I like to make each one shine individually, understand the beauty of each one, and that together everything multiplies. That you are not afraid, that you know that I am there and will help you in your worst moments. This does not happen much, in such an individualistic world. I am aware that I am better with them and that they are better with us. I miss them, when I am not with them. And we have reached a point where I can express what matters to me humanly and musically. It is not very common to see such a powerful and free instrumentation. I learn a lot from Marta, she inspires me a lot as a woman, as a friend, as a person, as a musician. It has been beautiful to see it, she is the one I have known for the shortest time.

And it has a superexpressive color playing the cello.

— Yes. It's just that she's like that. And Bori is so transparent with the double bass... He's like a child connected to the earth. Perhaps he's the most fragile, but at the same time the most sincere. He focuses a lot on the connection with the collective, with emotion. And Carlos, we know each other so well that we have a very curious telepathy. He has a brutal imagination, and he's a very good musician; the three of them are. What the four of us do on stage is as precious as it looks. It's not a lie, because there's a lot of lying on stages. It's true.

In these first concerts your daughter, Lola, was also singing. Will she do the whole tour?

— I don't know. I want to take her to Latin America. She's finishing her second year of high school and will have exams and the university entrance exam. If not, she would come.

Does she want to make music?

— She is an artist. She can do whatever she wants. She has brutal potential, but I want her to be whatever she wants. I love that she enjoys singing so much, because I understand it's complex. The pride we feel for each other... Mine is evident, as a mother. She has accompanied me all my life, and she knows a lot. She is super pure, creative, and free. We have a very exciting bond, more exciting than any song. I have the career I have because I have been a mother, and I have been Lola's mother.