While all around us certainties crumble one after another, one remains intact: the creative streak of the Berlin-based, Argentine-born, ace musician Camila Nebbia shows no signs of drying up. After an incredible run of albums in 2025, so high-quality that it's almost impossible to rank them (don't even try, just get them), Nebbia doesn't let our turntables cool down and returns with the album "Noche y Niebla," an equal partnership with Luis Nacht on tenor and soprano saxophone, supported by the rhythm section of Jeronimo Carmona (double bass) and Fermin Merlo (drums), while she on tenor, as a rule.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1959, Luis began his formative journey studying the flute in Mexico City, taking his first steps as a professional musician touring Central America and Europe as a flutist and singer with the latin music band Grupo Sur. He later moved to New York and began playing saxophone, taking lessons from George Coleman and Richie Beirach. His collaborations include, among others, Actis Dato, Iannacone, Giunta, Otero, Hoogland, Hecht, Verdinelli, and Perez, and a series of prestigious awards earned at home and in Europe contribute to defining his stature as a musician. Jeronimo Carmona is a double bassist with a solid trajectory in foundational Argentine jazz ensembles and collaborator of Luis Nacht for over two decades. Fermin Merlo stands out for his rhythmic creativity and deep understanding of interaction in free improvisation, having worked alongside Nacht for more than ten years.
After many encounters on stage and in the student/teacher dynamics, Luis and Camila meet again in a Buenos Aires studio, attempting, through aesthetically and generationally diverse perspectives, to define sonic paths that unravel in the nocturnal mists of the amazing cover picture and perhaps also of their names, which translated as Night and Fog. We don't know if this is a joke or an induced suggestion, but what is certain is that the final result fully achieves the intended goal, offering us a labyrinth that challenges the listener, not by imprisoning him in tangles of sounds he can't unravel, but, on the contrary, by showing him the way out, or rather, multiple ways out, according to different everyone’s sensibilities, provided he follows the directions simply hinted at by the musicians.
A distinctive feature of the album is the working method used, establishing, before recording, the titles of the pieces, which serve as narrative coordinates within which to let the improvisation flow, unfolding between stories, intrigue and mystery, without ever drying up into sterile conceptualism and thus losing the emotional intensity expressed in dramatic and dreamlike plots that constitute the album's hallmark. The interplay and the resulting play of references among Nacht and Nebbia is wonderful, perfectly met by the powerhouse of Merlo and Carmona and, as always, it's interesting to hear what the protagonists have to say about. Nebbia: “Improvisation in ‘Noche y Niebla’ is a radical commitment to the present moment. We are not only searching for melody but for the expression of sound in its most solid and stripped-down state. It is a sound that is found and shaped in the fog, right at the moment of execution.” Nacht: "This album is the continuation of many years of work, taken to a new conceptual limit. My lyricism collides with Camila's sonic purity and that tension becomes the true composition of the record. Having Merlo and Carmona, musicians with whom I share more than years of history, gives this freedom an essential rhythmic anchor". As in every great free album, the architecture is very solid and only the excellent skills of the musicians are able to make it invisible to the listener: Noche y Niebla is a paradigmatic example, don’t miss it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment