Diego Pinera - Odd Wisdom (2021 ACT Music)

Diego Pinera is a unique figure who is genuinely taking music in new directions by juxtaposing the po-lyrhythmic freedom of jazz with other metric systems. As he says, “I studied music in the places where it came from.” He started playing drums as a four-year old in Montevideo. His student years were spent in Havana, Boston (Berklee) and Leipzig.

Based in Berlin since 2003, he has continued to wi-den his musical horizons, immersing himself in the ‘odd’ meters of the title through extensive work with Berlin-based musicians from Greece and Bulgaria.

‘Wisdom’ here refers not just to Pinera’s accretion of wide knowledge and consummate skill, but also to mystery and alchemy: the track “Conversations With My-self” is a hushed, concentrated masterpiece. His ear for fresh colours and timbres is astonishing.

His ACT debut “Despertando” was described as a “treat for the ear,” and “Odd Wisdom” is a kaleidoscope of sonic inventiveness. “Mi Cosmos”, for example, has the rasping sound of a snare over the drum-head. “Robotic Night” features a drum synth pad, played live in the studio.

“Odd Wisdom” is a significant and personal album. “It brings together all of the sounds and rhythms that I have been working on for the past decade.” Pinera gathered a dream team from the New York top flight together for just one day at the Trading 8s studio in New Jersey: Donny McCaslin, Ben Monder and Scott Colley have already made their mark in countless other contexts, and they are on spellbinding form here.

And yet “Odd Wisdom” also has a wonderful ‘lightness’ about it (it is one of Pinera’s favourite words). In these truly capable hands, complex music has a magical fluidity, freedom and flow. Pinera has acquired his wisdom by being watchful. As his evocative lyric for “Space” ex-presses it: “Al mirar arriba, más allá, en el sol.” (I under-stood by looking up, beyond, into the sun.)

01 Clave Tune 8:39

02 Domingo 6:14

03 Conversation With Mysel f 5:09

04 Robotic Night 4:12

05 Mi Cosmos 5:03

06 Space 7:18

07 Away 4:50

08 De Madrugada 5:04

09 Easter in Pugl ia 3:18

10 Blue Monk 7:16

Diego Pinera / drums

Donny McCaslin / saxophone

Ben Monder / guitar

Scott Colley / bass

Music composed by Diego Pinera, except Blue Monk composed

by Thelonious Monk, arranged by Diego Pinera

Recorded and rough mix by Chris Sulit at Trading 8s Recording

Studio, New Jersey (NYC), February 07, 2020

Final mix and mastering by Klaus Scheuermann

Produced by Diego Pinera

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Diego Pinera - Despertando (ACT MUSIC 26 January, 2018)

It was the awakening (Despertando) of a tinge of longing which inspired Diego Pinera to record this album. More than seventeen years after having left his native Uruguay, he re-visits his roots, the influences which first left their mark on him, and the legacy which made him the musician he is today.

His choice of compositions is highly personal: tunes by Gato Barbieri and Ernesto Lecuona are clear cultural references to Argentina and Cuba (Pinera also studied in Havana). His own composition “Osvaldo por Nueve” is a homage to his first teacher and mentor Osvaldo Fattoruso. It is also Pinera’s modern take on the ‘candombe’ folklore tradition, popular in Uruguay. The track “Yakarito Terere” is personal too: a composition by his father, inspired by a memory from childhood, of regular excursions into the hinterland of Montevideo.

Pinera’s encounters with Latin American music, and with jazz in all its breadth, have led him to develop an unmistakable style which serves as the artistic filter for “Despertando”: through the combination of his advanced conception of rhythm, a jazz sound with a Latin touch, and the freedom of improvisation, this album becomes a portrait of the artist in full, and one in which his strong character comes across vividly.

Pinera’s fellow musicians also inhabit this field of creative tension. Each of them has a very different musical background, and together they combine to make a concept of jazz which is stylistically open, deeply marked by their origins, and coloured by Latin American music.

This unusual chemistry between the musicians - and also their extraordinary talent – keep the music fresh and airy; there is musical complexity and virtuosity in abundance, but it is imbued with great subtlety.

“Despertando” avoids all temptation to wallow in nostalgia. What Pinera has achieved is to re-invent the place he dreams about, to awaken Latin jazz in a way which is deep-rootedly his own, and is able to stand on its own terms. Far removed from folklore, cliché and superficiality, this is not a reversion to the past, but to the present.

1 Osvaldo por Nueve

2 Caravan

3 Despertando

4 Yakarito Terere

5 St. Thomas

6 Last Tango in Paris

7 La Comparsa

8 Vulnerability

9 A Puerto Padre

10 Duerme Negrito

11 Once Pasos

Diego Pinera / drums, percussion & steel drum

Tino Derado / piano & accordion

Omar Rodriguez Calvo / bass

Daniel Manrique-Smith / flutes

Julian Wasserfuhr / trumpet & flugelhorn

Produced by Siggi Loch

Recorded by Klaus Scheuermann 

at Hansa Studios Berlin, April 24 & 25, 2017. 

Assistant: Nanni Johansson

Mixed and mastered by Klaus Scheuermann

Cover art by Nathan Carter, Fascinator For For Gene Genie, 2016

Acrylic on aluminum, 74 x 63.25" / 188 x 160.7cm

Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York

www.diegopinera.com

Diego Pinera Trio - My Picture (2016)

Label: Octason Records

Source: Cdbaby

All good things come in threes.

The triangle is the most stable geometric construction. A three legged stool may be crooked, but it does not wobble. A square is only stable, if it is split it into two or more triangles and even a circle consists basically of infinitely equilateral triangles that run at an acute angle towards the joint center. But the natural law, which applies one hundred percent to geometry and structural analysis, is abrogated, in almost all cases, in Jazz. Usually trios are solo projects with a fixed star and two satellites. If it turns out to be different, it is godsend.

The Diego Pinera Trio is such a blessing. Saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Ben Street and drummer Diego Pinera create a stable triangle, where the page length is not defined by the vertex but by the common enclosed area. This is all the more surprising as the fractions of the three protagonists and the intensity of the trio are variable, not only from tune to tune, but also within the tunes. Without that, the established coordinates of solo and accompaniment within the trio would manifest themselves - all three musicians play with the same passion, the creative fractions are and remain evenly distributed - constantly shifting the center of gravity and the communicative moment.

The three emanates a magic, which is used by religions, fairy tales, myths and literary figures. The Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the Three Wise Men from the East are just three examples of Christian mythology. The three theological virtues are faith, love, and hope. Three times black cat, three wishes, the three feathers, the three Musketeers, the three from the gas station, it is always three times in the one, a holistic approach resulting in a three-way split.

This one or singularity as three is what is so impressive about the trio of Diego Pinera. It is not about what different contexts Mark Turner invents, nor the long list of musicians with whom Ben Street has played with. In this particular Trinity it is only about what happens in this, and in no other moment. That is amazing, exciting, and unpredictable. The three musicians are free to use all of their imagination because they can completely trust in the stable constellation. Because each of them combines holistically what is currently played and what is expected by the two other collaborators. There are three individual musicians who bring in their whole backgrounds, but there is also the association of three intentions to a Meta impulse that is completely detached from its origins.

It is an expression of the creative force of Pinera, Street and Turner that by all spiritual poetry of their trio context they stay present and earthbound. All three are constantly transmitting and receiving between each other, but they transmit together. All this is based on the grounds of jazz and using elements of jazz. But this music embodies much more than what the categorical shortening of a genre can do. It is the uniqueness of a special and distinctively playful moment which you can only hear from this and no other context. To be a part of this moment is everything. To be a part of the fundament, the architecture of the execution, and the spirit of the continuation - a further division by three.

Wolf Kampmann
(translated by Wolfgang Frister & Eric Holland)

1. Open Window
2. Cuidado
3. New Hope
4. Evidence
5. Today
6. Bart
7. My Picture
8. The New One
9. The Song Is You

Diego Pinera - drums
Mark Turner - saxophone
Ben Street - double bass 

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