Two sides of Irene Aranda

By Eyal Hareuveni

Spanish, Berlin-based Irene Aranda is primarily a classically trained pianist and self-taught in free jazz and free improvisation hyper-pianist who employs the piano as a sonic environment, using preparations and extended techniques to uncover enigmatic textures and resonances.

Irene Aranda - MAY (Relative Pitch, 2026)

 MAY features Aranda in a trio with Spanish sax player Don Malfon (aka Alfonso Muñoz) and Japanese-born vocal (and visual) artist Ami Yamasaki in a studio recording from Berlin in January 2026. The eight free improvised pieces are titled as wishes that begin with “May the games begin”, go through “May you have many more meaning in Urdu”, and end with “May you all hate free jazz” (apparently, with the most free jazz playing by Aranda here).

This unconventional trio take their respective singular sonic palettes of Malfon, Aranda, and Yamasaki to the extreme, obviously, with an array of highly personal extended techniques - breathing (with mutes and objects, in the case of Malfon), echolocation vocals (Yamasaki), and playing (or pounding) inside the piano (Aranda). Each piece visits a distinct, intense, and deeply visceral, immersive territory, shaped by radical, urgent, and Dadaist approaches to breath, space, vibration, or sound at all, often on the verge of chaos. The trio keeps searching for friction and compatibility of its strong-minded musical personalities. Occasionally, the trio’s dark humour and Yamasaki’s sensual, lyrical, and often pixie-like (wordless) voice introduce a more accessible vein into the uncompromising sonic collisions. There is no end to the inventive, inimitable dynamics of this trio or to its unpredictable, captivating lexicon.

Prepare for the most physical, wildest possible ride yet a highly rewarding one where even the most discerning listeners may find themselves caught off guard.

The Dark Deniers - Tales of Freedom (Self-Released, 2026)

Aranda leaves the piano aside and is the mastermind, conductor, vocalist and bandleader of The Dark Deniers ensemble, a Berlin-based experimental octet featuring trumpeters Germán García and Brad Henkel, alto sax player Grgur Savić, baritone sax player Pablo Muñoz, trombonist Gerhard Gschlößl, guitarist Christian Kühn, and drummer Martial Frenzel. The Dark Deniers mix dramatic poetic texts (of John Masefield, Maya Angelou, John Donne, Lord Byron, Antonio Machado, Alfonsina Storni, Anne Bradstreet, Paul Éluard, Gilbert Chesterton, and Dylan Thomas), focusing on mortality, resistance, existential collapse, time, and transformation, with Butch Morris’ conduction principle, free jazz, avant-rock, metal, and free improvisation.

The Dark Deniers’ debut album, Tales of Freedom, was recorded live at Studio Zentri Fuge in Berlin in May 2026. Aranda is a capable, evocative and passionate vocalist and a commanding leader who leads this organism-like, powerful ensemble through ten pieces, beginning with the ritualist, pagan-like prayer (or provocation): “We are The Dark Deniers. Let us summon Death from a summer woman”, and soon lets this poetic phrase bloom into a funky storm. This ensemble sounds as if it searches for a primordial, pre-cosmic state of raw sound, as expressed in the aptly titled “Vocifera”, with Aranda’s effective growling vocals.

Throughout Tales of Freedom, Aranda uses the poetic texts, the language (the English, Spanish, and French ones), and the ensemble’s complex sonic palettes as material she can shape, mould, and invent anew as impossible yet intricate, organic structures, with a touching, thought-provoking, and often subversive pathos. The Dark Deniers, like the trio with Malfon and Yamasaki, also embrace chaos, but in a different approach. Aranda shapes the sonic architectures and literary texts from chaos and sheer visceral freedom, and vice versa, always flirting joyfully with fiery, explosive dynamics, danger and risk-taking, or as Aranda puts it: “play with death the way that children play with fire”.

Any round with Aranda’s music is bound to take listeners on the most unpredictable yet deeply immersive wild ride, inspire and equip us all with enough invigorating food for resisting thoughts, until, one day, Aranda and The Dark Deniers will rule the world.