“Music is a constant learning, that lasts a lifetime, and in which you try to be better until the last day”. The singer and lyricist Xavi Casellas leans on the bar to –paraphrasing his friend, bassist Tom Warburton– have “a beer or three”. For now, the first one is already going down while, in the background, James Taylor’s voice “tints the walls with his songs”. The notes of Fire and rain make him smile. He takes the first sip, while observing the twilight through the Bar’s window.
“When I was a child, at home, essentially swing was played. My father was a great lover of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé, Ella Fitzgerald... Of those great records with arrangements by Don Costa and Nelson Riddle”. He grew up in Calella where, from his tender adolescence, he got into musical troubles, singing in groups, learning self-taught, “because as a student I was always quite undisciplined”, he laughs.
The first step towards professionalization came to him one winter when he was offered to move to Benidorm to sing in pubs and venues in the city. That was a before and after. “I realized that I could make a living with music and those were years in which I did a lot of things, from gaining experience touring with an orchestra through hundreds of towns, to starting my own folk and country projects or leading the band Dimecres Tampoc, which had its moment”, he recalls.
But time passed and that didn't quite gel, so Xavi decided to make a radical change. “I left music and started studying Audiovisual Communication. I was thirty-five years old and I felt very comfortable with that. I even took a workshop at the New York Film Academy, my first contact with the Big Apple, and even wrote a couple of movie scripts that, however, never materialized”.
And then, music returned to his life in the most unexpected way. “It was when I saw Clint Eastwood’s movie, The Bridges of Madison County, and I fell deeply in love with Johnny Hartman’s ballads from the soundtrack. Like the combination of a safe that is miraculously guessed, everything took on, at that moment, a new meaning that aligned the jazz of his childhood with a notion of singing where nothing is ever the same. “Because music is like the flame of fire, something that constantly changes, that is never the same. A song is what is happening at the moment of singing it. Next time it will be different. It will be something else”.
Because music is like the flame of fire, something that constantly changes, that is never the same.
Unforeseen journey
In this second stage of his sound journey, Xavi Casellas has had unbeatable travel companions, starting with his friend Emilio Solla, and continuing with Ben Monder, John Ellis or Julien Labro. He has recorded four albums and has showcased his vocal jazz repertoire on some renowned stages, such as the Catalan Jamboree or the Nova Jazz Cava, or the New York Lincoln Center, Smalls, Zinc and Mezzrow.
He debuted in 2005 with Yesterday’s sun, an album that already showed promise in his way of conceiving vocalese, a technique consisting of putting lyrics and singing over pre-existing instrumental pieces. “Something that was worked a lot with standards, but that I want to take to contemporary jazz repertoire by artists like Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Oscar Feldman or, of course, Emilio Solla. Because it works just as well.”
He has recorded four albums and has showcased his vocal jazz repertoire on some renowned stages.
His second album, Unguarded smiles, was recorded in 2009 in New York and accurately reflected this criterion. So much so that the label Club del Disco has just reissued it in a luxurious vinyl edition under the title of Vocalese voyage. “I think the name is very apt, because this recording has truly been a journey towards an unbeatable second life. A journey that, of course, I did not expect.”
The album's seven tracks – which include a vocal version of a Frederic Mompou song – are part of a broader repertoire that the singer and lyricist performs on various Barcelona stages such as Jamboree, 23Robadors or, of course, the Club del Disco. Obviously, each time it is something different. Irrepeatable.
My musical project is in a moment of effervescence and I can't think of a better setting than this city.
Ideal setting
Despite the disappearance of places, corners and shops that give character to the city, in an unstoppable process of globalization and tourist trivialization, for the musician Barcelona still combines the perfection “of a small, walkable size, typical of a provincial city”, with a markedly cosmopolitan character.
“My musical project is at a moment of effervescence and I can’t think of a better stage than this city,” affirms he who, since distant 1989, exchanged the calm of Maresme for the colorful bustle of the Sant Antoni neighborhood.
– What is also experiencing a great moment of effervescence is our gastronomic offer… In case you fancy something for dinner, it’s already time.
Xavi Casellas doesn’t even think about it. “Man, if you have fricandó or escudella, I’d be delighted,” he determines. Your smiling face by James Taylor keeping worthy company to the expression on his face.
And, taking advantage of the end of his beer, he clarifies: “washed down with a good wine, if possible.”