The jury of the National Prize for Contemporary Music 2022 has proposed the awarding of this prize to Sílvia Pérez Cruz. This prize, which is awarded annually by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, is endowed with 30,000 euros.
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The jury has distinguished the Catalan artist with this award for “the creative and interpretative quality of her career”, as well as “the naturalness, versatility and audacity of her proposals”. The jury also highlighted “her unwavering commitment to beauty”.
Biography Sílvia Pérez Cruz (Palafrugell, Girona, 1983) has a degree in jazz singing from the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), although her musical training began in childhood, as from the age of four she began to study a wide range of subjects -solo, classical sax and piano, cajón, harmony, singing (jazz and flamenco), improvisation, arrangements, sax (jazz), composition-, in which she combined classical, jazz and popular Iberian and Latin American music.
She was co-founder and singer of the group Las Migas (2004 – 2010) and formed an occasional duo with guitarist Toti Soler, although her debut as a composer and soloist would come with 11 de November (Universal, 2012), for which she received a gold record; a success she repeated in 2014 with Granada (Universal 2014), published as a duo with Raül Fernández “Referee”, with whom she also co-produced the previous album. In 2017 he published Vestida de nit (Universal Music), a project named after the composition of the same title by his parents Glòria Cruz (lyrics) and Càstor Pérez (music), which emerged after more than five years of touring with a string quintet, as a synthesis of deep sound research, in which he combines classics from his repertoire and unreleased songs with his own arrangements and those of close collaborators such as Joan Antoni Pich, Javier Galiana de la Rosa and Carlos Montfort.
During 2019 he toured in duo format with Menorcan pianist Marco Mezquida, a collaboration that ended in Japan with the recording of a live album at the Blue Note in Tokyo called MA. Live in Tokyo. On 2 October 2020 she released her latest album Farsa (impossible genre), a project that brings together the compositional reality of Sílvia’s last three years through thirteen original songs with her own lyrics and the occasional borrowed poem, reflecting her enriching dialogue with other creative fields.
An artist with a very personal style, but with great versatility, her career has also been forged in fruitful collaborations with other disciplines, such as theatre, dance and film. He has collaborated with names such as Gino Paoli, Stefano Bollani, Lluís Homar, Rocío Molina, Jorge Drexler, Hamilton de Holanda, Toquinho, Natalia Lafourcade, Lila Downs, Liniker, Javier Colina, Joan Manuel Serrat and Lluís Llach, among others, and has sung with prestigious groups such as the Orquesta Nacional de España, conducted by Josep Pons.
Throughout her career, she has worked in several theatre productions, directed by Joan Ollé and Julio Manrique. He also composed the music for two productions by Lluís Homar: Terra Baixa, in 2014, and Cyrano, in 2018.
In the field of dance, the premiere at the Avignon Festival (2018) of the production Grito Pelao (Max Award 2019 for best musical composition for Sílvia and best dance show) together with the dancer and choreographer Rocío Molina, a work about the desire to be a single mother, which was the result of a joint research process on the emotion prior to the form, the common emotion, prior to singing and dancing, the one shared by singing and dancing.
In cinema, he was the voice of the film Blancanieves, by Pablo Berger, winner of 10 Goyas in 2013, including Best Original Song. In 2015 he composed and recorded the soundtrack for Cerca de tu casa, by Eduard Cortés, a film about evictions in which he also starred and which crystallised in the release of Domus (Universal Music, 2016), an album with which she won the Silver Biznaga for best original music at the Malaga Film Festival, the Award for best original music at the PÖFF (Black Nights Festival) in Tallinn (2016), the Gaudí Award for best original music (2017) and the Goya Award for best original song for “Ai, ai, ai” (2017); She was also nominated for the Goya Award for Best New Actress. This album also includes the song “No hay tanto pan”, one of the most requested songs in her concerts, along with her versions of “Pequeño vals vienés” and “Gallo rojo, gallo negro”. In September 2018 she collaborated in La noche de doce años, by Uruguayan director Álvaro Brechner, with two covers and two of her own compositions, as well as playing a small role as an actress. Her most recent film work is for the animated film JOSEP (2020), directed by the French illustrator Aurel, for which she created the soundtrack and voiced two characters. The film was awarded in France at the Prix Lumière (awarded by the international specialised press) as Best Animated Film of the Year and Best Original Score.
Perez Cruz’s voice has travelled extensively in Spain, Cuba, the United States, Estonia, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Algeria, Tunisia, Belgium, Holland, Croatia, Hong Kong and England, and has also frequently visited stages in France, Portugal, Norway, Italy, Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil and Japan.