Sebastián Castro Trío - Mixture Vol.4 (2020)

Sebastián Castro was one of the most important and noticeable jazz musician of the generation that arrived on the circuit in the first half of the ‘10s, with a multiple militancy as a sideman, demanded by older jazz players as a name that came to renew the pianists community as well as a composer with focus and own narrative. In this regard his work was exposed in the album Vieja Escuela, a sort of first creative statement.

Born in Curicó, and brought up in a family of musicians and luthiers, Castro begun playing in the evangelical church. In 2006 he settled down in Santiago in order to study classical piano in the University of Chile, but in parallel he ventured into popular music. His incorporation to jazz came after seeing in action the pianist Lautaro Quevedo in the Sebastian Jordán quintet in 2009, who afterwards added Castro to the personnel with whom he recorded the album Trapecista (2015).

In that very year Castro appeared in other recordings, Un respiro (by Jorge Díaz) and Triofisis (by Sebastián Prado). Back then, his collaborations were fairly active, playing with figures such as Cristián Cuturrufo, Pancho Molina, Christian Gálvez o Alejandro Espinosa, and appearances at the Providencia Jazz Festival, where he performed two of its three nights with Quintessence and the singer Natalia Ramírez.

In his first album, Vieja escuela (2016), he used as a sidemen the same personnel that performed as a quartet for Jorge Díaz, alternating here the roles of leadership, composition and support. Shortly after, Castro was reduced himself from quartet to trio to expand his approach as a pianist. In 2018 he published Forastero, along with Hugo Rojas (bass) and Juan Pablo Jaramillo (drums), in this case in a step towards a certain musical audacity.