Joxan Goikoetxea & Olatz Prat
Renowned Basque musician Joxan Goikoetxea and singer Olatz Prat gave a special concert entitled - Biziak Bizi Nau (Thanks to Life) - at the Basque Cultural Center on Sunday, September 17th, following the members’ lunch.
Joxan Goikoetxea is an eclectic performer and composer with a deep knowledge of traditional Basque music and classical education. For four decades he has performed in venues all over the world, with his own projects (Alboka), as well as supporting artists of various generations and styles. He has published many works.
Olatz Prat started her career in jazz and has also covered rock and folk in several groups. Even as a soloist, this singer who adapts to multiple styles, has offered numerous collaborations and performances.
Joxan and Olatz’s paths converged in 2013, in the Sortuko Dira Besteak project, and since then they have offered several performances together, spreading the music and poems of the Basque Country around the world and bringing the world into Basque, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, among others.
Joxan Goikoetxea (Hernani, Gipuzkoa, 1967) is a Basque musician, composer, and producer with fifteen recorded works as well as numerous projects and live shows.
His artistic journey involves everything from the deepest knowledge of popular and folk forms and expressions to the practice of avant-garde currents and the management of new technologies applied to the different projects that he has led and shared. Classically trained, he is an eclectic artist who, among many other things, has set Shakespeare's sonnets to music, who was a pioneer of Piazzolla in the Basque Country in the 1980s, delved into the fields of root-electronic pairing in the 1990s, disseminated traditional Basque music throughout different European festivals with the group Alboka, in addition to endless collaborations with singers and groups of various generations and conditions.
Artists like Xabier Lete, Paco Ibañez, Bernardo Atxaga, Mikel Laboa, Imanol, Pier Paul Berzaitz or Antton Valverde have wanted to include the lyrical and personal character of Joxan Goikoetxea's accordion in their tours and works.
Olatz Prat. Born in Azpeitia (Gipuzkoa) in 1984, Olatz started to sing before she could speak. In 2002 she began her music career with the band Zuri&Beltz, singing jazz standards. Later she won the Euskadi Gazteako Maketa Lehiaketa contest with the rock band Karelean. In 2008, the band released the album 56. gelatik. Olatz was part of the Lantz group created by Mikel Errazkin, approaching the world of contemporary folk. Lantz released the album Igaran Gaiak in 2017. In 2013, Olatz joined the vast project “SDB – Sortuko Dira Besteak” directed by musician Joxan Goikoetxea, and in 2014 she participated in Zeru “Horren infernuak – Shakespeareren sonetoak” (Shakespeare's Sonnets in Basque). Collaborations and performances over the years make up the ongoing career of this singer.
Olatz Prat has done several jobs as a journalist (Hitza, Ortzadar, EITB [Basque Public Television]), and she also has translated for the Literatura Unibertsala collection: (Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010) by Ngugi wa Thiong'o [Gerra garaiko ametsak].)
