"When I arrived in Amsterdam to study, the professor, the legend of European tenor sax Ferdinand Povel, made me perform the standard Body and Soul for the first class. I played it and Povel, who would end up changing my life, made me realize that I played by intuition, but that I didn't really know what I was doing. That day, my approach to music theory and the language of jazz took a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn".
The musician and composer Lluc Casares squints his eyes and offers a knowing smile, as he leans on the bar to order: "An American coffee without sugar, and I'll ask you to fill it to the top with hot water".
--- Hot water to the top? Are you kidding?
--- Yes, I know, terrible. ---he laughs.
The regular continues, "after living in Holland, the opportunity arose to study at the Juilliard School in New York. They were two very intense years in which people like Wynton Marsalis, Kenny Washington, Barry Harris or George Coleman marked me a lot", narrates this saxophonist and clarinetist who says he loves his Fender Rhodes electric piano, and who assures that he likes "jazz first and then many more things, many of which come from the African diaspora in America, and others do not".
More than proud, happy to be able to dedicate his life to what he likes ---being a jazz musician and, in addition to playing, writing music---, this young man from Barcelona, integrated into the collective The Changes Music, has already played with artists of the stature of Dr. John, Ken Boothe or Nicholas Payton and, after having been involved in various projects, he is currently presenting his new album Septet, where he is accompanied by Irene Reig, Pol Omedes, Alba Pujals, Rita Payés, Xavi Torres, Pau Sala and his brother, drummer Joan Casares. In fact, both he and Lluc are sons of a musician: "My father plays the clarinet and the sax so, as far as I'm concerned, I haven't been very original".
Apart from the new album and a series of short-term concerts between Holland and Barcelona, Lluc is involved in the Barcelona Art Orchestra, along with Lluís Vidal, Néstor Giménez and Joan Vidal, with whom he is about to record the debut LP, Ragtime Stories: "Own compositions for a seventeen-person band, between jazz and contemporary classical".
Influences with names and surnames
When defining key moments, turning points in his artistic and personal trajectory, Lluc Casares draws on many names: Xavi Torres, Oriol Vallès, Pol Omedes, Bruno Calvo, Pablo Martínez, Joel González, Andreu Pitarch, Joao Coelho, Irene Reig. The et cetera is long, but there's a reason for it: "This music is like that, it's the people and their personalities that influence you at key moments that change you forever. In this aspect, it hasn't only been the teachers, but my peers have the same weight in my musical development."
And then, still halfway through the very long, watered-down coffee, he recalls his time in New York. "It was from 2017 to 2019 and, back then, I would go many nights to the jam session at the Smalls Jazz Club, where Roy Hargrove would frequently appear and, literally, give a lesson to the whole club every time he stopped by. He would take out his trumpet, play a masterful chorus, and sit down. When that happened, in those early morning moments, in that club you couldn't hear a fly."
A Barcelona with talent, but with a lot of hype
"There's something very symptomatic of our city ---observes Lluc--- which is that when we talk about artists, we don't talk about their work, but about their person. In fact, I have a recurring phrase that says 'the more music world, the less music'. I believe there is a lot of music and musicians who are deprived of visibility, because the entire cultural industry is blinded by the current dynamic of digestible audiovisual content for social media and by the dictatorship of the message, even if it's empty. It's something that happens in many other places, true, but in Barcelona it's really very tangible and greatly affects its musical substratum."
--- Are you referring to rewarding image over musical content?
--- Yes, and I don't like that imperative need to extol local idols who sweep festivals and programs just for the noise they make, for the image they cultivate and project, or for the unjustified hype that has been generated around them. Of the musician, let's look at their music!
Barcelona likes him and the same local admits that, sometimes, people have to come from outside to remind him what the city offers and to complain less, "even so, there are many things to improve at all levels: cultural, social, erroneous economic models based on savage capitalism and the suppression of urban personality. Not to mention the disregard for artistic forms for not being blatantly current, provincial or political". But it is evident that Lluc Casares sees the enormous potential of Barcelona and he himself is part of a restless and creatively very fertile generation that corroborates that there is a lot of talent in the air here.
--- You've finally finished that watery concoction. Do you want to eat something? Tapas, a sandwich, menu...?
--- Menu, obviously! ---he replies, as if there were any doubt that would offend.
--- The world doesn't know the greatness of the cultural achievement that the midday menu represents! ---he adds with a mischievous smile.