Trio Retro is an international jazz ensemble featuring the nine-language vocal styling of Cindy Gomez, three time Grammy winning vocalist / trumpeter Asdru Sierra and composer / producer / pianist Anthony Marinelli.
Anthony Marinelli Introduces Trio Retro
Transcript:
I met Asdru in 2006, when I was producing The Herb Alpert Whipped Cream And Other Delights album and I wanted to bring in Ozomatli to perform one of the songs, And ever since then I've had an ongoing relationship, we've been working on a lot of different projects together. And that's led to the current project that we’re working on now.
Asdru and I performed at the Grammy Museum a few years ago and we performed “Un Poco Mas” one of the songs that we're doing now and that song got a really good response. We had just prepared it for that particular show and thought well, maybe we will do more of these and a few people in the crowd yelled out, you know, where's the album and we were like, well, we're very flattered. We don't have an album, we're just here to perform and I think it warranted it that there's such an incredible depth of music that is not really being heard that much and that I think Asdru sings so beautifully that it made sense to do another song and then we did another song, and then we said, well, let's do another song, and now we're at six and I'm not sure when we're going to stop, but it's I think it's a process that's evolving too. It's that we're looking at something that we’re just at the tip of the iceberg and there's going to be so much more to go with it if we get the opportunity to do that and I really hope that we take advantage of it.
This particular music has an incredible depth of emotion in the lyrics. I think it kind of stems from that, and the song title kind of tells you something about the song, but then there's a narrative in the story in these songs that really attract me to wanting to perform them, and as an accompanist, I'm getting this opportunity to work with two amazing singers that are at a level where they feel that same thing in the lyrics and we're able to communicate that to each other, and we're doing it in a live performance. So there's something special there and there’s something really intriguing about that process to me and there's something that is, that allows the music to flow in that process. Like it wouldn't in a contrived kind of way because you know, since it's such emotional music, I think to have that element of surprise and that you know, something could just hit you like a first take -- magic happens!
Well, what is that?
Well, what it is I think, is that there's a chance, an element of chance and risk that happens and something that you wouldn't expect, the unexpected. You know, that's like what happens in like highly emotionally charged circumstances and we're kind of creating that in the studio as we go from song to song. So it's really exciting to not only do this level of music, but to do it with Cindy Gomez and Asdru Sierra, I'm pretty lucky!
