Jazz crosses the Atlantic — and comes back with compás

Some journeys change the way you play. Marc Miralta’s years in New York did exactly that.

A drummer, composer and one of Spain’s most internationally experienced jazz musicians, Miralta spent years living in a city where different musical languages seem to find each other before they have even been introduced. Out of that experience came New York Flamenco Reunion in 2000, a project that was already building bridges between two languages with an extraordinary appetite for risk: jazz and flamenco.

But this is not about placing jazz on one side and flamenco on the other. It is about understanding what they share: pulse, improvisation, tension, listening — that fraction of a second in which one musician throws out an idea and another decides what to do with it.

For his appearance at Alternatilla, Miralta brings together an exceptional band in Muro: Santi de la Rubia on tenor saxophone, Xavi Torres on piano, Miquel Álvarez on double bass and Bandolero on percussion, with Marc Miralta himself on drums.

Five musicians making music that knows exactly where its roots lie, but has no intention whatsoever of standing still.

There is flamenco. There is jazz. There is New York. There is the Mediterranean.

And, above all, there are five musicians having a conversation in the present tense.

On 28 November, Teatre de Muro becomes the precise point where all those paths meet.