Name: Violeta García
Nationality: Argentinian
Occupation: Cellist, composer, curator 
Current release: Violeta García teams up with Hora Lunga for their new album 4ever, out via -OUS. 
Hometown Recommendation: Lo de Chicho. It's a tiny bodegón, an old cantina-bar in the centre of Buenos Aires, where visual artists and people from all kinds of scenes now go to eat traditional food and listen to some tango, sometimes noise, sometimes cumbia, sometimes karaoke. 
Topic I rarely get to talk about: Right now, sicuri music. I listen a lot to this music from the north of my country, and also from Peru, Chile and Bolivia. I'm obsessed with hocketing, with that way of constructing music — the possibility of listening and composing in stereo, or rather in 3D, acoustically. I recorded a new solo album in a former gas holder, working with the natural acoustics of the space.

[Read our Hora Lunga interview]

If you enjoyed this Violeta García interview and would like to know more about her music, various projects, and upcoming live events, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.

For a deeper dive, read our earlier Violeta Garcia interview. 



What were some of your earliest collaborations? How do you look back on them with hindsight?

I've been collaborating since I was very young, playing and making music with all kinds of projects, artist collectives, bands, duos, trios. 

Almost fifteen years into working professionally, looking back, I still feel that collaborating is the most inspiring way for me to be an artist and a human being. It's where I learn the deepest things, in both of those senses. 

With Hora Lunga it was the same: the friendship, and sharing creative processes and sonic searches, is what led us to start making music together.

There are many potential models for collaboration, from live performances and jamming/producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?

With this duo we started in the jamming and producing mode, meeting in the same room in a studio, exploring sounds, composing collectively, long before we ever played live as a duo. 

It's a way of composing and producing that works for us and flows very organically.

How did this particular collaboration come about?

We met at a gig in Bern, Switzerland. That night I was playing a DJ set and Hora Lunga was playing with his band. 

We ended up hanging out with friends, talking, and that was the beginning of a friendship that eventually turned into wanting to make music together.

What did you know about each other before working together? Describe your creative partner in a few words, please.

I hadn't heard his music before we shared that gig. I remember I was going through some spiritual and emotional things to do with migration and with relationships that matter a lot to me, and hearing Hora Lunga's music was like opening a channel of emotional connection with everything I was living through. 

Later I heard another project of his, Wirren, an ensemble I'm now part of. I saw them play in Bern, at the Dachstock in the Reitschule. There were cushions on the floor, it was like a deep listening session, with a very particular, dreamlike lighting. That was when I knew collaborating with him would be something beautiful. 



Hora Lunga is a very calm person, someone who knows how to listen and how to give good advice, who never stays out until the end of the night, organised, hard-working.

What do you generally look for in a collaborator and what made you want to collaborate with each other specifically?

First of all, with whoever I collaborate with, I need a human bond that gives me trust and good energy, someone who isn't too demanding and who respects my timing and the strange touring life I lead. 

If that works, then I need a sonic connection, a shared searching that excites me, that makes me want to share and transmute my sounds and my practice.

Tell me a bit about your current instruments and tools, please. In which way do they support creative exchange and collaborations with others?

My main instrument in this project is the cello. In this duo I let myself explore the role of a cellist, playing and composing a lot from harmony and melody, which I don't do in my other projects. I love it. 

For this collaboration, the sound of the cello as a classical string instrument, together with the processing Hora Lunga does and that we design together, creates a tension, a nostalgia and an emotion that is the most characteristic and distinctive thing about the duo.

Before you started making music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning vs spontaneity in a collaboration?

Before we played together we shared conversations, friendship, parties, the music we were listening to. 

But the moment we actually started playing together it was a spontaneous collaboration, we got together to produce music without any goal, without the idea of releasing an album or touring.

Describe the process of working on 4ever, please. What was different from your expectations and what did the other add to the music?

We didn't go in with a plan, or with a concrete aesthetic in mind. Because of that, this incredible music simply appeared out of composing with our own materials and emotions. 

It was similar to how we made the previous album, but by now we know each other better, so the process of understanding what each of us imagined or wanted for a given track was much faster. 

What surprised me most about myself was how open I was to composing in a more melodic, less abstract way than I usually do, less concrete, with wider dynamic ranges, not afraid of emotion. 

Is there a piece which shows the different aspects you each contributed to the process particularly clearly?

"Emotional Luggage Allowance" is a good example of that shift and of what each of us brought to the record: at the start you can hear very clearly the composition and the role of each of us, the cello carrying the melody, Hora Lunga on piano …



But towards the end Hora Lunga starts processing and looping the cello, building it into a multilayer of cello sounds that turns into a kind of dream-like fantasy.

What tend to be the best collaborations in your opinion – those with artists you have a lot in common with or those where you have more differences?

Definitely the ones where we have a lot in common. 

For me, collaboration needs that shared ground first, a human connection, trust, good energy, a similar sonic sensibility, before anything else can happen. Without that, I don't think what happens between two people is really a collaboration anymore; it becomes more like a job, something done for a specific, concrete purpose. 

That's not necessarily bad, it's just a different kind of relationship. What I look for in collaboration specifically is that space where affinity lets both of us be vulnerable and open enough to actually build something together.

What happens when another musician take you outside of your comfort zone?

I love it, it inspires me, and it's hard. 

Having the courage to collaborate and to open up compositional processes collectively, with Hora Lunga, with Blanco Teta, with other collaborations, gives me the chance to grow, to learn to listen in other ways, to give ground, to break the hierarchy inside composition.

Decisions between creatives often work without words. How did this process work in this case?

We improvised, recorded sketches, re-recorded different versions of very specific ideas over and over. 

It was through listening and listening again to the recorded music that we made tiny, minimal changes until we arrived at the final versions.

What are your thoughts on the need for compromise vs standing by one's convictions? How did you resolve potential disagreements in this collaboration?

Like in any kind of relationship, playing as a duo is 100% about compromise. Talking a lot, noticing whether the other person feels comfortable or not, staying very aware, and communicating. 

Hora Lunga is someone who keeps that very present, so we never had a single moment of disagreement in this collaboration.

Was/Is this collaboration fun – does it need to be?

Yes, this collaboration was fun. 

Because we're friends, we like spending quality time together, finding the balance between working non-stop and obsessing over the creative process, and then resting from ourselves, going out for a beer, smoking a thousand cigarettes, talking about life and deep things, or about complete nonsense.

Do you find that thanks to this collaboration, you changed certain parts of your process or your outlook on certain creative aspects?

Yes. What captivates me most about collaborating is changing and learning, getting to know myself better as an artist, growing. 

With this duo I learned new processes and new timings of creation. To be patient, to make room, to allow myself to play in other temporalities of music, the slow, paused, sensitive dialogue.

Collaborating with one's heroes can be a thrill or a cause for panic. Do you have any practical experience with this and what was it like?

Everyone I collaborate with, or have collaborated with, is one of my heroes. 

So it's always very moving, and I go through a lot of stages of panic when it comes to opening up, exposing my insecurities, and being able to build something special and unique together.