Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917363128
Releasedate: 21-08-26
- Featuring Klaus Gesing on 3 tracks
Some albums function as aesthetic statements. Others as documentation of a specific moment in an artist’s life. And a few, more exceptionally, as portraits of a transformation. In “PEOPLE. PLACES.” those three dimensions seem to coexist at the same time.
The new work by Argentine guitarist and composer Martín Iaies emerges from a process of change that began several years ago, when he decided in 2019 to migrate from Buenos Aires to Austria. What initially seemed like a geographical displacement gradually became an artistic redefinition as well. The result of that transformation runs throughout the entire album.
“I arrived in Austria in 2019 feeling like a guitarist who composes, and today, seven years later, I think of myself much more as a composer who expresses himself through the guitar,” explains Iaies.
This 11-piece ensemble does not appear as a side project to his previous work, but rather as the natural expansion of the same artistic search: an elastic and orchestral version of a musical language already present in his quartet albums “REWIND & FF” (El Club del Disco, ARG, 2018) and “NEW BEGINNINGS” (Ears and Eyes Records, USA, 2023). That idea appears particularly clearly in “Graz”, the piece that opens the album.
“Opening the album with ‘Graz’ has a double meaning for me. On one hand, it is the city where this project began to take shape and develop. But the arrangement itself also starts as a trio and slowly expands until it reaches one of the climaxes of the album. That journey mirrors the evolution of my way of composing.”
That elasticity also works in the opposite direction. Some pieces originally written for the ensemble, such as “Canción de Cuna para Simón” or “Cyclical Loss of Hope”, later shifted into much smaller formats, while compositions originally conceived for quartet acquire a completely different dimension here. More than a fixed formation, the ensemble functions as a flexible organism, capable of expanding or condensing the same musical universe without losing its identity.
In “PEOPLE. PLACES.” the orchestral aspect never appears as a gesture of massiveness or grandiosity. Even in its most expansive moments, the album always maintains a deeply intimate relationship with melody and with the idea of song. The compositions begin from simple and familiar materials, which gradually expand into more open structures where improvisation, orchestral writing and a timbral search shaped both by contemporary European jazz and by elements of Argentine folk music coexist, as in “Zamba del Chaguanco”.
But unlike many large ensembles, the sound of the group does not seem to emerge exclusively from Iaies ́ writing, but also from the constant dialogue between strongly defined individual voices coming from different musical scenes and trajectories. Within that context appears the participation of German saxophonist and clarinetist Klaus Gesing, one of the most influential figures in contemporary European jazz and a longtime collaborator of artists such as Norma Winstone, Anouar Brahem, Kenny Wheeler and Wolfgang Muthspiel.
“Inviting Klaus initially felt almost surreal to me,” admits Iaies. “He was someone I had been listening to for years on some of my favorite records. But I’m grateful I dared to ask him: he ended up becoming fundamental to the sonic identity of the album and elevated the collective level of the ensemble.”
More than a point of arrival, “PEOPLE. PLACES.” seems to function as the sensitive documentation of a process still in motion. An album where expansion and intimacy, migration and belonging, song and orchestral writing constantly coexist and redefine one another. Perhaps that is why it never fully sounds like an album about distance, but rather about the bonds that emerge while crossing it.