With four decades of continuous and demanding activity, Sei Miguel’s appearances working with music other than his (very) own were rare. Even more so given the trumpet player and arranger’s field of work – always jazz – which is so often characterized by an overwhelming promiscuity among musicians. A fact that makes this collaboration with the North American Daniel Levin a moment of precious communion, open but imbued with the rigor and vision so characteristic of this craft. In other words, we are not in the often tired field of free improvisation. And raw.

A mythical figure in jazz, Sei Miguel plays his (pocket) trumpet with full awareness of its history. A weight that is reflected in a very assumed music, played with rare intensity and that has been laboriously perfected through his own musical system. Among his discography, started in 1987 with ‘Breaker’ – in an Ama Romanta edition -, there are documents as valuable as 1996’s ‘Showtime’ or 2006’s ‘Tone Gardens’, having found a home on Clean Feed in the last few years, which serenely bets on bringing out the integrity of his work.

Daniel Levin has been described by Wire as one of the most brilliant contemporary cellists. Impressive words but, this time, fully justified for this Vermont-born musician with a background in New York’s fertile jazz and improvised music scene. From there he has been polishing a very personal language, gathering inspiration from American jazz, European classical music, new music, free improvisation or microtonalism. This hard work has led him to play extensively throughout Europe and the United States, to collaborate with such great musicians as Rob Brown or Mat Maneri, and to release valuable pieces on labels such as Trost, HatOLOGY or our own Clean Feed. BS

This concert will feature two solo moments and a final duo set.