Giuseppe Campisi Quartet
The experience of playing jazz and improvised music in a format as a quartet can be exciting and challenging at the same time: the nature of a smaller ensemble brings the focus on the interplay, on the understanding of each other’s ideas, on the search for a common direction that brings the music to places.
The music on this last album, titled Like Splashing in the Ocean, was conceived during the most difficult times of the pandemic.
I tried to put on paper some of those complex feelings and new emotions; then I got together with some musicians I deeply admire - Santi de la Rubia (saxophone), Jaume Llombart (guitar) and Roger Gutiérrez (drums) - just to play some sessions at home and see those musical thoughts take form. Ultimately, we hit the studio and recorded.
It was such a liberating feeling to let everything go through music. It felt so good to get together and play. It was so refreshing, it was as it should be: freeing, unburdening and, most importantly, it was fun. As a wise teacher and mentor says, it felt like how playing music should feel: like splashing in the ocean.
It is such a pleasure to publish this recording with a label I've always looked up to, Fresh Sound New Talent.
Jordi Pujol, who is the mind behind it, is a key figure in the development of jazz and improvised music in Barcelona (and beyond), he produced countless artists I love and it great to be part of his catalogue!
Previously, in 2020, I recorded and released some quartet music from a small tour I did in Sicily with a group featuring Santi de la Rubia on saxophone, Paolo Sorge on guitar and Lluís Naval on drums. Down here you find a video from one of those performances. You can also find the EP on Bandcamp, HERE!