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Pataruco - CD
My first Afro-Venezuelan jazz album was recorded at Fish Factory in 2015, a project born from a lifetime of listening, learning, and wanting to translate Afro-Venezuelan rhythms into a jazz vernacular that felt honest and forward-looking. The studio’s intimate, raw atmosphere—concrete floors, exposed ducts, and a single control room window—became a creative partner: it captured the warmth of the drums, the breath of the horns, and the subtle textures of hand percussion with a clarity that matched the music’s immediacy.
Quentin Collins on trumpet brought a voice at once lyrical and incandescent. His lines braided with the percussion, sometimes echoing folkloric calls, sometimes cutting through with hard-bop intensity. Mikele Montolli on bass anchored the music with both pulse and poetry—walking, tumbao-inflected grooves and arco passages that expanded harmonic space. Charlie Stacey’s piano provided the harmonic architecture: voicings that referenced jazz tradition while leaving room for cross-rhythmic conversation. Eddie Hicks on drums moved between jazz timekeeping and Afro-Venezuelan rhythmic dialects, shaping grooves that breathed rather than locked into metronomic rigidity. Wilmer Sifontes on percussion was the heart: congas, caja, maracas phrasing the ancestral conversation, pointing to specific dance rhythms and calling motifs that guided improvisation.
Compositionally the record is a blend of originals and reimagined traditional motifs. I aimed to respect the ritual and communal origins of the Afro-Venezuelan forms—fuga, tambor, and golpe—while allowing jazz’s improvisational openness to reframe them. Tempos shift from contemplative to ecstatic; arrangements move from trio-like intimacy to full-band polyrhythmic surges. We left space for looseness: takes where breath and human timing mattered more than surgical perfection. Those moments — a trumpet phrase hanging a beat too long, a hand percussion fill that arrived slightly offset, a piano chord crushed into the groove — are what made the recordings feel lived-in and true.
Recording at Fish Factory allowed us to capture both precision and grit. Microphone placement emphasized the physicality of instruments: close mics for the congas’ skin, ribbon mics for the trumpet’s warmth, and room mics to keep a sense of ensemble air. The mixing respected dynamic contrasts and exposed the interplay between rhythm and melody rather than smoothing it into a single sheen.
The album’s emotional arc moves from remembrance to celebration. Tracks rooted in mournful chant and slow tambor evolve into dances that insist on movement—testimony of survival and continuity. For me, the project was an act of cultural retrieval and musical synthesis: honoring Afro-Venezuelan roots while articulating them in a language shared with jazz musicians and listeners worldwide.
Working with these players made the record what it is. Quentin’s melodic intelligence, Mikele’s steady inventiveness, Charlie’s harmonic empathy, Eddie’s responsive time, and Wilmer’s generational knowledge were indispensable. Together we made a record that sounds like a conversation—sometimes argument, sometimes embrace—between past and present, ritual and improvisation. It remains a milestone in my work: a first statement, not a conclusion, and a foundation for conversations I continue to have in performance and composition.
My first Afro-Venezuelan jazz album was recorded at Fish Factory in 2015, a project born from a lifetime of listening, learning, and wanting to translate Afro-Venezuelan rhythms into a jazz vernacular that felt honest and forward-looking. The studio’s intimate, raw atmosphere—concrete floors, exposed ducts, and a single control room window—became a creative partner: it captured the warmth of the drums, the breath of the horns, and the subtle textures of hand percussion with a clarity that matched the music’s immediacy.
Quentin Collins on trumpet brought a voice at once lyrical and incandescent. His lines braided with the percussion, sometimes echoing folkloric calls, sometimes cutting through with hard-bop intensity. Mikele Montolli on bass anchored the music with both pulse and poetry—walking, tumbao-inflected grooves and arco passages that expanded harmonic space. Charlie Stacey’s piano provided the harmonic architecture: voicings that referenced jazz tradition while leaving room for cross-rhythmic conversation. Eddie Hicks on drums moved between jazz timekeeping and Afro-Venezuelan rhythmic dialects, shaping grooves that breathed rather than locked into metronomic rigidity. Wilmer Sifontes on percussion was the heart: congas, caja, maracas phrasing the ancestral conversation, pointing to specific dance rhythms and calling motifs that guided improvisation.
Compositionally the record is a blend of originals and reimagined traditional motifs. I aimed to respect the ritual and communal origins of the Afro-Venezuelan forms—fuga, tambor, and golpe—while allowing jazz’s improvisational openness to reframe them. Tempos shift from contemplative to ecstatic; arrangements move from trio-like intimacy to full-band polyrhythmic surges. We left space for looseness: takes where breath and human timing mattered more than surgical perfection. Those moments — a trumpet phrase hanging a beat too long, a hand percussion fill that arrived slightly offset, a piano chord crushed into the groove — are what made the recordings feel lived-in and true.
Recording at Fish Factory allowed us to capture both precision and grit. Microphone placement emphasized the physicality of instruments: close mics for the congas’ skin, ribbon mics for the trumpet’s warmth, and room mics to keep a sense of ensemble air. The mixing respected dynamic contrasts and exposed the interplay between rhythm and melody rather than smoothing it into a single sheen.
The album’s emotional arc moves from remembrance to celebration. Tracks rooted in mournful chant and slow tambor evolve into dances that insist on movement—testimony of survival and continuity. For me, the project was an act of cultural retrieval and musical synthesis: honoring Afro-Venezuelan roots while articulating them in a language shared with jazz musicians and listeners worldwide.
Working with these players made the record what it is. Quentin’s melodic intelligence, Mikele’s steady inventiveness, Charlie’s harmonic empathy, Eddie’s responsive time, and Wilmer’s generational knowledge were indispensable. Together we made a record that sounds like a conversation—sometimes argument, sometimes embrace—between past and present, ritual and improvisation. It remains a milestone in my work: a first statement, not a conclusion, and a foundation for conversations I continue to have in performance and composition.