If drummers are understood to be timekeepers, then it’s fair to ask what sort of math they’re doing. Jaki Liebezeit could be relied upon to find the square root of any musical problem; when in equal company, Elvin Jones had an exponential effect on the music’s rhythmic and emotional power. Vasco Trilla is equally adept at division and multiplication. The Barcelona-based percussionist, who performs in improvised, jazz, and rock situations all around Europe, often plays solo concerts and duo encounters that benefit from his ability to generate a multitude of contrasting, yet complimentary sounds. But he can also confine himself to the one decisive gesture that will pull a moment together. In a review of Trilla’s duo release with fellow percussionist Tim Daisey, Bristling Duets, Bill Meyer wrote that Trilla “introduces contrasting tones and complementary rhythms that turn brisk solos into elegant musical expressions of special experiences.”
Ellery Eskelin with Andrea Parkins & Jim Black — One Great Day (hatOLOGY)
I remember attending a concert of the trio at Lisbon’s Jazz em Agosto festival. It was at the city’s Hot Jazz Club, a cozy and small venue. I didn’t know much about them, and I was completely blown away, especially with Jim Black's drumming. I bought the album that night and listened to it compulsively for a long time.
Cynic — Focus (Roadrunner Records)
The band that changed the extreme metal scene, adding the sensibility and chops of a more jazz fusion-oriented band. Being a complete metalhead at the time, it was a revelation to hear that way of playing, and of course Sean Reinert’s drumming was out of this world. The band went on a long hiatus as the music was not really understood at the time.
Eric Dolphy — Out to Lunch! (Blue Note Records)
One of my all-time favorite albums. I still feel fascinated every time I play the album. Every track is packed with ideas, interesting twists, surprising melodies and every player is stellar. I can’t believe what Tony Williams played at that age… Crazy!
Eddie Prévost — Loci of Change (Sound and Sensibility) (Matchless)
Eddie Prévost’s solo albums are the real thing for me. It took me a bit to understand them, but I felt immediately hooked with his approach; textural, harsh and equally beautiful. Definitely a big influence on me. I strongly recommend his book No Sound Is Innocent, where he talks about improvised music. For me a must-read book.
King Crimson — THRAK (Virgin)
The album that made me discover the King Crimson legacy and amazing catalogue. I was, and still am, very fascinated by the progressive rock scene of the seventies. Bill Bruford is one of my all-time heroes!
Naked City — Radio (Tzadik)
A big turning point. It was my kind of entrance to the jazz world. Not the most conventional way to do it, but very rewarding! Since then, Zorn has been a big influence, Painkiller, Masada, etc. Always creative and on the edge of styles.
Gorguts — Obscura (Olympic Recordings)
A mastodonic, dissonant and weird death metal masterpiece. One of my all-time favorite metal albums. I love all their albums. The latest, Colored Sands and Pleiades Dust are truly breathtaking.
Edgard Varèse — The Complete Works (Decca)
Varèse’s music is very important to me. He highlighted percussion in ways never explored before. I Can’t count how many times I listened to “Ionisation!”
Frank Zappa — Roxy and Elsewhere (Discreet)
I could choose a different Zappa album every day. A fascinating album with a bit of every Zappa-esques that I love. I used to play in a Zappa cover band and “Echidna’s Arf /Don’t you ever wash that thing” was a real challenge to learn and play.
Krzysztof Penderecki — “Symphony No. 1”
I’ve been obsessed with this symphony. I find it really fascinating and menacing at the same time. The way he uses percussion in the opening had a big impact on my approach to solo percussion playing. Although I could cite any of Penderecki's early avant-garde sonoristic works, somehow this work got me hooked the most.
Liba Villavecchia Trio (TePeKaLe Sound. 2022-03-29) [Concierto de jazz]
Liba Villavecchia Trio (TePeKaLe Sound. 2022-03-29) [Concierto de jazz]
Liba Villavecchia Trio
Liba Villavecchia: saxos
Alex Reviriego: contrabajo
Vasco Trilla: batería
TePeKaLe Sound
29 de marzo de 2022 a las 20:00. Entrada libre
TPK Art I Pensament Contemporani
Av Josep Tarradellas 44
08901 L’Hospitalet (Barcelona)
Más información sobre Liba Villavecchia…
Vasco Trilla and Tim Daisy "Bristling Duets" 2021 (relay 031) by Vasco Trilla & Tim Daisy
In 2020, many people had to figure out what else to do when the usual options were abruptly taken off the table. Percussionist Tim Daisy was no exception. With live music out of the question, he spent some time completing projects that were already in motion, working on solo music and preparing archived recordings for release. But such solitary pursuits can take a musician who has thrived on real-time interaction for decades only so far.
During the fall of last year, Daisy began pursuing virtual collaborations. The first, with electronic musician Ikue Mori, set the template. He sent her some files of his playing, which she was free to manipulate and add to in any way that she chose. Mori took full advantage of the invitation, mixing, layering, editing, and adding electronics to Daisy’s drum kit and marimba. Light and Shade doesn’t sound like a real-time exchange, but it does sound like an authentic interaction between the two musicians. Daisy started doling out tracks to other musicians, which he has compiled into two volumes of download-only Imaginary Rooms.
Now Bristling Duets (2021) brings the concept back around to the essence of Daisy’s work — percussion. It contains fellow percussionist Vasco Trilla’s responses to Daisy’s files, and while it is the result of two musicians making music alone, one in Barcelona and the other in suburban Chicago, their collaboration exudes genuine empathy. Sure, Trilla understands Daisy’s instruments, since there’s considerable overlap in their instrumentation. And the two men are similarly committed practitioners of jazz and improvisation. But he doesn’t just play something that sounds right when heard in proximity to Daisy’s expressions of texture, motion and rhythm — he completes them. Adding gongs, bells, music boxes, and more drums to tracks that usually zero in on some element of the trap kit, Trilla introduces contrasting tones and complementary rhythms that turn brisk solos into elegant musical expressions of special experiences. On “Celurean,” suspended metallic sonorities on provide a vertical dimension to circular foray around the toms, and richly reverberating gongs and bowls blow through the stick dance on “Toledo Song” like an unexpected fog bank turning a grove of young trees into a mysterious forest. The drums and scrapers heard on “The Whole City” are so in sync, they feel like the work of one octopus-appendaged, compositionally minded person rather than one human adding to another’s sounds.
It would be natural to get curious about how Daisy and Trilla would sound playing at the same time in the same room, and hopefully such chances will emerge. But on the strength of this encounter, one hopes that neither musician loses the other’s email.
Vasco Trilla gets around. Based in Barcelona, the percussionist works all around Europe, but especially in Poland, in settings that encompass rough jazz-rock and austere free improvisation. Most of his recorded work has appeared in collaborative settings with musicians such as Rafal Mazur, Mars Williams, and Luis Vicente, and with the band Phicus, which released an album aptly named Solid on Astral Spirits last year. Unmoved Mover is a completely solo performance, but it effectively stretches the boundaries of what one man can do in real time.
The album’s credits identify just two instruments, timpani and gong. But while it’s undeniable that Trilla’s trap kit never makes an appearance, those credits are indisputably incomplete. The siren-like call and microscopic rustling that introduce the album suggest that the items Trilla applies to his kettle drum’s skin are as important as the drum itself. And the deliberate, unhurried pace with which he deploys the series of complex, metallic sounds that follow serve notice that silence and decay are essential elements of his music’s shape. The second track, “Hylomorphism,” is equally concerned with contour, but much more dense, using variations in the rate that his mallets strike the drum to turn a brief solo into an elegantly rendered composition. And “Ousia,” which is confined to the gong, has a similar sense of patiently resolving tension.
Around the record’s midpoint, Trilla introduces new sounds. A drizzle of chimes makes “Living Bodies” feel like a guided tour from a deep tunnel through the secret trapdoor into Harry Bertoia’s workshop. And the accumulating armada of music boxes that encircles the gong’s reverberations on “Causeless Cause” takes the music from the percussion studio into the gift shop, where, one supposes, Trilla would be happy to sell you this CD while the tinkling boxes wind down. He does get around, doesn’t he?
A barcelonai Vasco Trilla igen széles spektrumú zenei múlttal rendelkezik - a rock és a metál világából indult, de már jó ideje főleg a jazz és a szabad improvizáció foglalkoztatja. A hagyományos dobfelszerelésen kívül előszeretettel használ mindenféle kiegészítőket, melyek segítségével igen egyéni hangzást alakított ki az elmúlt évek során. Sokat foglalkoztatott zenész az európai improvizatív zenei szcénában. Magyarországon is többször játszott már, többek közt a Kováts-Ajtai-Vasco trióval. Koncertjeik olyan jól sikerültek, hogy elhatározták lemezt készítenek közös improvizációikból. Ennek lesz az első állomása a trió koncertje a Lumenben.
Ajtai Péter - bőgő
Kováts Gergő - szaxofon
Vasco Trilla - ütőhangszerek
Ajánlott adomány: 1000.-
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Barcelona drummer Vasco Trilla has a musical history of a broad spectrum – starting from the rock and metal scene, he’s been mainly engaged in jazz and free improvisation for a long while now. Beyond the conventional drum set, he gladly uses all sorts of accessories – forming his very own sound in the past years. As a frequent performer of the European improvisational scene, he has already played in Hungary before – with the Kováts-Ajtai-Vasco trio among others. Encouraged by the success of their concerts, they decided to release an album of their collective improvisations. Their concert in Lumen will be the first stage of this effort.
Péter Ajtai – double bass
Gergő Kováts – saxophone
Vasco Trilla – drums & percussion
Suggested donation: 1000.-
Sinestesia: Cirera – Chant – Trilla. Ciclo de Música Improvisada (Barcelona. 2018-02-06) [Noticias] Sinestesia Ciclo de Música Improvisada Martes 6 de febrero de 2018 a las 20:00 Concierto de Albert Cirera - Tom Chant - Vasco Trilla Con la colaboración de Marianne Brull Sinestesia C/Santa Caterina 52-54 Barcelona – Sants
miércoles 16 de marzo de 2016 | Soda (Barcelona) Völga: Iván González: trompeta, Fernando Carrasco: guitarra eléctrica y efectos, Àlex Reviriego: contrabajo, Vasco Trilla: percusiones Todas las imágenes en Tomajazz.
