Leonardo Balada has nurtured an enthusiasm for choral music since his involvement as a youth in the amateur Catalan chorus, Orfeó Enric Morera. Since 1969 composing choral works has been his favourite medium of expression. No-res (‘Nothing’), a symphonic tragedy for narrator, chorus, orchestra and tape, composed in memory of his mother and set to texts in several languages, some invented, by the poet Jean Paris, is a dramatic, questioning protest against the death of a loved one. Although the cantata Ebony Fantasies is freely taken from four negro spirituals, it is not a simple exercise of harmonizing popular melodies but an original, creative composition with its own striking individuality.