I recently had the opportunity to play a couple of shows in Teatro Sucre and Pobre Diablo jazz club (very nice music venues in Quito), with an amazing band build by Ecuadorian jazz-fusion group Pies en la Tierra around 2 amazing percussion players: Dave Samuels on vibes and Anders Åstrand on marimba. Pies en la Tierra is without any doubt the jazz reference on the Ecuadorian scene, and I would highly recommend to check out their music starting HERE: a nice blend between modern jazz and Ecuadorian tradition.
Dave Samuels does not need any introduction as he’s part of jazz history, having spent many years with Spiro Gyra, among many other amazing collaborations. I feel very blessed to have played this concert with him… special thanks here to Pies en la Tierra’s drummer Carlos Albán who invited me to be part of the show.
And cherry on top of the cake, this concert gave me the opportunity to meet (we basically met on stage) the great Anders Åstrand… percussionist and world renowned mallets specialist from Sweden (listen to Anders HERE). During the show, I immediately felt a deep and natural connection with him, to the point where we were sometimes doing a “duo thing” inside a bigger band, but still maintaining a lot of space in our playing (with vibes, marimba, guitar and piano on stage, you really have to get into big-ears mode). I could not be happier when talking backstage after the show, I discovered that he felt the same way…
As he was staying some more days in Quito, we agreed on trying to organise a last-minute duo session. The hardest part was to find a place with a marimba where we could record the session… My friend and famous Ecuadorian percussionist Pablo Valarezo (listen to his music HERE) then magically offered his personal home studio, with a nice marimba in it ! Stars aligned for the session to happen !
We finally met and recorded 10 pieces of totally improvised music. I put a pair of cameras and managed to record some of them on video as well, till the cameras ran out of battery… Below are the videos of 3 pieces… the rest may be released as an album one day… or not. We also agreed on meeting again in Europe and organise some duet concerts in Sweden and France. Life will tell !
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