Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble - The Lullaby Project and Other Works for Large Ensemble (TAPESTRY 2018)

Composer Felipe Salles releases most ambitious project to date

The Lullaby Project and Other Works for Large Ensemble

Featuring 18-piece jazz orchestra, recording available via Tapestry Records

The Lullaby Project and Other Works for Large Ensemble is composer Felipe Salles’ most ambitious project to date and the debut recording of the Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble, an 18-piece jazz orchestra that combines Brazilian, Latin American and classical influences, creating a unique esthetic in large jazz ensemble writing. Salles’ eighth recording as a leader, The Lullaby Project will be out via Tapestry Records.

The music draws inspiration from melodic fragments originating from traditional Brazilian lullabies. The objective was to create a musical commentary on the dark underlying qualities of lullabies, as well as to illustrate the social transformation and impact lullabies have had on generations of children. Culturally, they represent both the tradition and globalization of those who, like Salles, have immigrated to another country and built families elsewhere.

“Having chosen to express those qualities through instrumental music, I believe that the motivic development and the use of different harmonic and instrumental texture can create a strong aural image in the listener’s mind,” explains Salles.  “As the melodies are slowly revealed, the musical context creates a sense of evolutionary inevitability where it is possible for traditional and contemporary musical elements to meet and co-exist.”

Motivic development was utilized to expand the limitations of form, while ensuring that improvisation and groove-oriented sections would also be a vital part of creating this new approach to large ensemble Brazilian jazz. Each movement is through composed and features different members of the ensemble as soloists. Color and texture have a large role in the overall esthetic of this work, which also utilizes harmonic devices ranging from Baroque to 20th century classical music, as well as jazz and Brazilian folk elements.

The three tango-inspired pieces express Salles’ deep connection with the Argentinean style of music and its modernization by composers like Astor Piazzolla, to whom Astor Square is dedicated.  As with the Lullabies, the tango inspired pieces reflect his twenty-year long quest to find a unique crossover jazz ensemble esthetic that combines all his influences and cultural roots.