Juanma Trujillo - Música Para Quinteto (Live at Jazz Cava) (2026) [Hi-Res]

Venezuelan guitarist Juanma Trujillo relocated from New York to Barcelona in 2022. He says modestly of his work ‘I don’t know that I have a voice, but I think that I love to create. And I think I’ve set my life up around being able to keep creating music’. The move sounds highly fruitful, judging by this quintet’s live performance on 10th May 2025. It’s fresh and exhilarating, the music is superbly captured on this recording from Barcelona’s independent label and studio UnderPool. Trujillo describes his musical output as ‘short pictures, snapshots, elements of collage’. Indeed, his 2022 LP is titled Collage, and the live music here has a fragmentary nature, pieced together momentarily, then pulled apart by the quintet. It’s this form of visual language that Trujillo uses to make sense of the world: ‘Film makes me think about aesthetics and pacing and makes my life better.’ The movies of David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Akira Kurosawa, in particular, inspire.

In the current quintet, he uses two horns to explore different orchestration possibilities within the group and to tailor the material to each player’s strengths. The live performances have minimal prep: just a brief rehearsal, then a soundcheck. ‘It’s electrifying and captivating but at the same time unsettling and risky, a journey towards surprise and freedom of expression, says saxophonist Miguel Villar. Villar’s mirror image within the quintet is tenor saxophonist Albert Cirera. The quintet is complete with bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Ramon Prats.

Trujillo’s self-proclaimed ‘listening journey’ is apparent on the record, with echoes of Ornette Coleman, Paul Motian, Keith Jarrett, Dewey Redman, and Bill Frisell. Still, the influences take the form of acknowledgement rather than overshadowing Trujillo’s distinctive approach. He quotes Ornette towards the end of the opening tune ‘Howl’, taken from his 2024 album of the same name. His guitar sits stealthily low in the soundscape, its tough boxiness surrounded by a progressive, percussive shambles. It’s hard work finding structure here as the guitar cuts across the saxes diagonally, their squawking voices separated and distinctive, but the dissonance is gloriously stimulating.

The record consists of four original compositions by Trujillo. One of the highlights is the second tune, ‘Conflagration (for Los Angeles)’; it is immediately apparent what Trujillo means by the orchestrational possibilities of a dual-sax setup. The two entwine to the point where they become more than the sum of their parts, virtually summoning a third instrument. The music finds elegiac beauty as embers glow in the aftermath of tragedy, and the piece becomes a requiem to that which was lost to wildfire.

The fiery theme continues with ‘Humo (for Andrew Hill)’; it’s loose, free and impressionistic, a counterpoint to the previous tune. Ungrounded by the strange lightness of Kamaguchi’s bass, the whole thing feels airborne and weightless as it wafts around. The rhythm of Prat’s brushes is sketchy and in flux; the two horns emerge after a couple of minutes, and what were separate conversations converge with urgency.

‘Jardin’ closes after an uncertain exploration during the intro; the piece recalls Redman’s patterns on Jarrett’s Eyes Of The Heart, a reference that is fleeting as the quintet becomes expressively free on this outstanding live date.