Emilio Solla: Not to dirty music with the miseries of the ego

"My melodies are awesome. As a pianist, I'm just okay, but I don't know many people who write melodies like mine. The thing is, I don't really have much merit in that. The merit belongs to the music; she is the one who speaks. I merely let her pass through me and, after that, yes, I work hard to finish shaping her, to give her a path." Night has fallen over the city and the Bar is lively. After some tapas, pianist and composer Emilio Solla sips a Tanqueray gin and tonic, leaning on the bar, while the notes of Uno está by Bobbi Humphrey crackle in the air. "One has to be a spectator of what one creates," he continues, "and know when to be silent so that the music transcends, only her, without dirtying her with the miseries of the ego."

Notes, measures, melodies, and silences have been speaking to him since his earliest childhood. In addition to being an engineer, his father was an amateur crooner and double bassist. "Since I was little, I wanted to play the piano, and at eight years old, I was already enrolled in the Buenos Aires conservatory." As is often the case, it was in adolescence that the music that would captivate him crossed his path. "Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, and, on my first trip outside Argentina, when we went to Canada to see some uncles who lived there, discovering Keith Jarrett's Köln concert." To these discoveries was added, shortly after, the entry into his life of the music of his homeland, tango, "through Piazzolla, obviously."

And that is, fundamentally, what has characterized his work: "The fact of taking Argentine music to different places, that's what I dedicate myself to," he smiles. For that, he had to leave Buenos Aires, "to other places that would be too big for me so I could rise to their level." That's how he ended up in Barcelona in 1996 and, ten years later, in New York. "A place that energizes you, and where the level is always very high. The Jungle, as my friend Paquito D'Rivera calls it, where you realize that no one is necessary, that constantly stimulates you and where it doesn't matter what you did yesterday, because tomorrow it can swallow you."

Handmade, among many people

When, still young, Emilio Solla saw Pat Metheny live with pianist Lyle Mays, he stopped everything. "That same day I stopped teaching my students and started studying piano intensely; that finished building my technique." For him, continuing to teach would have been, at that moment, betraying music. Clouding it with those miseries of the ego that must always be kept far away.

Perhaps it is this self-demand, this need to keep opening paths through study and hard work, the ingredient that has made him fit into such a tough and competitive environment as that of the Big Apple. There he has developed the bulk of a musical career that earned him a Latin Grammy in 2021 and six other nominations, and in which he has worked alongside illustrious figures such as Paquito D'Rivera, Arturo O'Farrill, Yo-Yo Ma, Edmar Castañeda or the saxophonist and cantaor Antonio Lizana, "with whom we will soon record a new album," he announces.

For now, his latest LP is Handmade (Club del Disco), recorded at the helm of his nonet La Inestable de Brooklyn, and whose title is in itself a declaration of principles, in times of self-induced clumsiness by AI. "I am delighted presenting and playing it, valuing all the team that, with their work, their hours of study and effort, make this music arrive, have life." A handcrafted, organic work, which is the result of many aligned talents. Synchronized, so that the music speaks loud and clear.

Welcome, again

After twenty years living in New York, the local is intensifying his contact with Barcelona which, in reality, was never lost. "I'm going to alternate seasons between here and there, because this is a city that welcomed me from minute one," and he sips a gin and tonic before clarifying, laughing: "Think that, in 1996, I arrived here almost by accident, with the idea of moving to Madrid as soon as I could. But that idea lasted exactly 24 hours, I immediately wanted to stay in this city that I totally love, for its sea, for its mountains, for its streets, because in many aspects it is like a Buenos Aires, but improved, where things work better."

And he finishes his drink before stating: "It's a shame that sometimes it's a place where it's so hard to get ideas off the ground, to undertake, to transcend the institutionalization that belittles, that tends to turn places into endogamous ones." After which he observes the bottom of his glass, now empty except for the melting ice and the wrinkled lemon slice.

— What doesn't belittle is the night in here. Would you like another gin and tonic? You're invited!

Heart's desire by Don Blackman plays in the background. Emilio Solla likes it. He looks around, the Bar vibrates with people hungry for nightlife. He smiles.

— By any chance, you wouldn't know how to make a good pisco sour? –he asks.

— Like in Lima itself!