2024-04-07 03:15:15
In the field of Creole jazz, having eight albums published is a sign of, at the very least, obstinacy. But there is much more than that in the music of Andrew Hayescomposer and saxophonist who has just released lights today, an album with his own music, the eighth of his production. For a week now the album has been traveling through the platforms and this Sunday it will have its baptism before the public. At 9:30 p.m. Bebop Clubthe jazz stronghold of Uriarte 1658. With Hayes will be the musicians who recorded: the trumpeter Juan Cruz de Urquiza, the double bassist Ezequiel Dutil, Bruno Varela on drums and the guitarists Damien Poots and Pablo Passini. Also the singer and author Juana Sallies, responsible along with Hayes for one of the distinctive features of lights today: the songs.
“Composing songs somehow put me in another place,” says Hayes in a conversation with Page 12. “The challenge was to introduce songs without altering the concept of the music we have been making with this group. We have been working with Juana for a long time, with a dynamic that occurs very naturally, attentive to being closer to the standard model, without chorus, than to the generic song,” continues the saxophonist. “In general I compose on the piano and when music comes out that I feel is close to his sensitivity, I pass it on to him so he can try putting words to it. Juana’s lyrics are very suggestive, they play with metaphor, with dreamlike atmospheres at times, she creates images that go very well with my music. We live surrounded by literalism and to encourage poetry is to take that leap into the void. Poetry and jazz share that taste for risk and Juana understands it perfectly because she knows those two worlds,” adds the musician.
“The arrows” is the first song, which also opens the album. “About memory” and the theme that gives its name to the work, in the closing, are other examples of sensitive and intelligent lyricism, which at times sound like grateful offerings to the miracle that an artist like Luis has lived on this side of the world. Alberto Spinetta. The energetic “Colibri” – with good solos by Juan Cruz de Urquiza and Hayes himself – contrasts with the rest of “The Long Goodbye”, after the Artltian “The Crazy Seven”, perhaps a conversation with “The Raging Toy” that It’s in Seven, Hayes’ previous album. The reharmonization of a Bach chorale, in which Sallies’ voice is another instrument, and a version of “Invitation” by Bronisław Kaper, complete a work that, as usual with Hayes, balances writing and performance with refined jazz criteria. .
“Except Facundo Flores, who is a guest percussionist, and Pablo Passini who joined in place of Ramiro Franceschin, the group of musicians from lights today He is the same one who was with me in Seven, my previous album,” says Hayes. The data shows the importance of continuity and the possibility of developing an idea in the long term. “Having the same musicians opens up important musical possibilities. Between us there is a strong connection that consolidated a sound. I write what I want them to play and from that they play as they know how to play. In that tension music ends up being defined. That is why it is very important to record everyone together, like a live one, even for the voice, which suddenly finds itself submerged in the sound of the instrumentalists,” highlights the saxophonist, who is quick to highlight another important continuity: “With the sound engineer Juan Pablo Alcaro, we have already been working together for five albums and Jano Seitún is the author of the covers of my previous albums, The Other Sea y Sevenand also lights today”.
There are eight themes of Lights today. A journey through a variety of climates and forms of expression. In an era, they say, of “random” listening, Hayes resists in favor of the idea of disco as a concept. “The chamuyo of random listening is for the mainstream. In jazz freedom is on our side and in our listeners a horizon of expectation is maintained that has to do with ordering the variety. I put out “simple ones,” which have always existed, but when I put together a music album I think about it with the balances and narrative arc of an album,” says Hayes.
–What will the live presentation of lights today?
–In jazz the same thing never happens twice. The other day we did a rehearsal and it sounded great, better than on the album. The presentation of an album always sounds better than the recording, to the point where you say ‘uh, I should record now.’ But it turns out that if you didn’t record before you have nothing to present… Anyway, the album is just a photograph of what happened. Music is a living organism, it always brings new things.