Generational distance always brings with it a series of burdens and tensions in the artistic field. Evolution tends to involve breaking with what has been consolidated or, in any case, looking for things that those who laid the foundations did not want or did not know how to find. At the same time, one always starts from something that already exists, and influences and references are something that, normally, the young creator cannot get away from. In popular music, evolution has from time to time involved breaking with previous trends, including a certain degree of disdain for the prevailing music when those who sought to give another twist were forming. The “killing the father” of all life, in short.
In jazz and creative music, on the other hand, there is traditionally a two-way and enriching relationship between veteran and young musicians, fostered, among other things, by the former’s desire to remain creative and in search of new horizons, and by the latter’s thirst for access to experience and direct learning from the hands of living masters.
Some recently released albums show that healthy confluence of young and old in improvisation and jazz, which often produces exciting music when both forces build a balanced dialogue between those who have spent decades searching for new avenues of musical expression and those who face that search with less experience, but also with an effervescent and yet to be tamed curiosity.
This relationship between two creative forces framed in different generations is reflected very well in the new album of the duo of the British double bassist Barry Guy, 77 years old, with the Catalan pianist Jordina Millà, 40. Guy, one of the most important figures of the free jazz and the free improvisation of history, has found in Millà a perfect companion to cultivate abstract, mysterious and challenging music, working on the exploration of sound and any possibility offered by the relationship of the performer with his instrument, however subversive this may be.
Millà debuted in 2018 sponsored by another illustrious veteran, the colossal pianist Agustí Fernández, who published the Catalan’s outstanding debut, Herbal maleson her label Sirulita Records. Six years later, and making truly minority music, the pianist has achieved a milestone with this new recording of her duo with Guy: being the second Spanish artist to publish with the legendary German label ECM (the first was Jorge Rossy, in 2021). Live in Munich contains a concert recorded in 2022 in which everything is improvisation and acoustic exploration. The rapport of both creators is based on a shared intuition, on constant listening and reaction between each other and on the unwavering desire, also shared, to go further at all times. Listening is demanding, but it inspiringly reflects the search of two artists wanting to squeeze the most out of every opportunity that the leap without a net that is free improvisation gives them.
In ‘Beyond this Place’, 81-year-old pianist Kenny Barron recruits one of the most overwhelming young talents in American jazz, Immanuel Wilkins
Returning to jazz orthodoxy, and more specifically to one of its most important living masters, Kenny Barron’s new album is the latest example of how far a veteran jazz musician can remain not only current, but absolutely brilliant after six decades of career. This is demonstrated by Beyond this Placein which the 81-year-old pianist signs one of the most overwhelming young talents in American jazz, Immanuel Wilkins. At 26, the saxophonist already has a solid and meteoric career, with two albums as a leader published by Blue Note and numerous collaborations, particularly with his generation partner Joel Ross.
Wilkins has it all: sound, a fresh delivery and an interpretive excellence that catches the eye from the moment he starts playing. Aside from the saxophonist, Barron is also accompanied by his regular trio with bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake, plus the excellent vibraphonist Steve Nelson, forming a well-rounded quintet that shines especially with the meeting between the octogenarian and the twenty-something. Together they produce music rooted in tradition, but absolutely vibrant, in which the leader’s pianistic eloquence fits perfectly with the saxophonist’s fertile and airy improvisations.
Another magnificent album has just been released in Spain, bringing together several generations of our scene, led by veteran double bassist and composer Baldo Martínez. Imaginary music The album emerged from a collaboration between Martínez and the Vitoria Jazz Festival last year, and is now released by the Karonte label as an album that, in addition to containing superlative music, is also a compendium of some of the most resounding talents of our jazz. On the one hand, regular collaborators of the leader, such as percussionist Lucía Martínez and saxophonist and flutist Juan Saiz. Both are two of the most relevant names on the current scene: the first is already the owner of an impeccable career, and the second, who has not yet turned 40, is already emerging as one of the most interesting saxophonists of the moment in Europe.
Both for the group’s clairvoyance and for the openness and beauty of its music, we can consider ‘Música Imaginaria’ as one of the great titles that Iberian jazz has given in recent times.
Alongside them, the extraordinary trumpeter Julián Sánchez and the youngest members of the group: the Portuguese accordionist João Barradas, aged 32, and the prodigious vibraphonist and marimbist Andrés Coll, aged just 24 (41 years younger than the leader). Coll is originally from Ibiza, the island where the German maestro Joachim Kühn resides, who as soon as he discovered him spread the word about his overflowing talent among friends and acquaintances. Martínez, an old friend of Kühn, did not hesitate to immediately call the young Coll to form part of a sextet that could not but produce something truly remarkable. With a markedly Atlantic sound that goes from the nostalgic to the fiery, the album is a renewal of the musical universe that Martínez has created over the years, and, both for the clairvoyance of the group and for the openness and beauty of its music, we can consider it one of the great titles that Iberian jazz has produced in recent times.
Jordina Millà and Barry Guy
‘Live in Munich’
ECM
Kenny Barron
‘Beyond this Place’
Kiyoshi Kitagawa, Johnathan Blake, Steve Nelson and Immanuel Wilkins
Artwork Records
Baldo Martinez Sextet
‘Imaginary Music’
Julian Sanchez, Juan Saiz, Joao Barradas, Andres Coll and Lucia Martinez
Karonte
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