Handmade : Emilio Solla's Tribute to Craft and it's Importance to Human Connection

 

Emilio Solla and La Inestable De Brooklyn-Handmade-Club Disco Records

The Grammy award winning, Argentina-born pianist/composer Emilio Solla and his group La Inestable De Brooklyn, releases his latest Handmade of March 13, 2026. Solla is this era’s eminent practitioner of creating modern music. He skillfully combines elements of Tango, Milonga, Latin Folk and Jazz sensibilities into its own beguiling style and Handmade delivers that in spades.

For those not up to speed on Solla’s previous work, Solla was educated in Argentina receiving his degree in Classical Piano at the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires. He later received a master’s in jazz composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York, eventually relocating first to Barcelona in Spain in 1996 and later to New York in 2006 where he now resides. He has worked with notable jazz musicians like Billy Hart, Paquito Rivera and Donny McCaslin and leads his own NY-based quintet Bien Sur!. Solla has been an active composer in chamber and symphonic music with such notable projects as Suite Piazzollana, a modern Tango/jazz inspired suite that is a homage to the guitar icon Astor Piazzolla. He released his 17-piece big band recording Puertos: Music from International Waters in 2019 and the album won a Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2020. In 2023 he received praise for his arrangements and orchestrations for his collaboration with Paquito D’Rivera titled Ritmo-The Chick Corea Symphony Tribute.  

Emilio Solla (photo credit unknown)

Handmade is a beautiful addition to this talented composer’s discography. The album is a tribute to craft, the art of working with your mind and hands. Given the rapid changes in the technologies that seem to alter almost every way we work and communicate, it is fitting that an artist like Solla recognizes that our work or our art,  a product of our creativity and hard achieved skill, is honestly realized by our own hands, our own voices, our own instruments and even in the case of dance, our feet. As such it needs to be honored and preserved to maintain the essential human connection we need to effectively communicate ideas. I believe Solla’s message here is that when technologies like robotic machines or AI can mimic our creativity and communicate soulless information or algorithmic generated art then we have lost something that we cannot afford to lose.

Solla’s La Inestable De Brooklyn, which loosely translates fittingly as The Unpredictable from Brooklyn, is made up of some top-tier musicians from NY.  The nonet includes Solla on piano; Tim Aracost on tenor saxophone , clarinet and bass clarinet; Sara Caswell is on violin; Edward Perez mans the double bass; Rogério Boccato provides drum work and percussion; Mike Fahie is on trombone; Rodolfo Zaneti is on bandoneon; David Smith plays trumpet and flugelhorn; Alejandro Avilés can be heard on soprano and alto saxophone, and flute; Facundo Colman provides percussion on track 2; and the vocal of Sofia Tosello on track 9.

Emilio Solla and La Inestable De Brooklyn

Solla opens the album with the third part of his “Suite de los Abrazo”- Bodegon Canibal or “Suite of Hugs or Embraces.”  He comments on his album notes that the three-piece suite should not be thought of as being required to be heard in a particular sequence and so he suggests that listeners might mix and match the suites. On the third suite, a gorgeous piece that demonstrates Solla’s creative use of the band’s diverse tonal basket, we hear Boccato’s drum and percussive work set the infective beat.  Armacost’s bass clarinet provides an unusual woody, tonal bass line before the remaining section adds the brass and woodwind color.  Solla’s piano adds sparse accents and Perez ‘s bass beautifully maintains the rhythm with Boccato. Avilés alto soars and then the total section creates a cacophonic but joyful canvas of color that includes inspired work by Armacost, Aviles, Smith, and Fahie. Caswell and Zanetti weave their two instruments in a particularly sympathetic way adding their tones as Solla’s arrangement swells with excitement and splendor. Wonderful.

The album continues with a homage to the compositions of Joni Mitchell. Solla starts out with a repeating piano line that is accented by Zanetti’s warm bandoneon and sweet Caswell’s violin. Solla skillfully orchestrates the instruments that he has available to him like an artist painting a picture and the results are gorgeous, but despite his reference to having referenced some of Mitchell’s compositions in this piece, I cannot tell which ones he used for the inspiration. Needless to say the man has a wellspring of imagination.

The second part of the suite” Suite do los Abrazo” is subtitled “Milonga MUtante” and is a piece that was inspired during the Covid pandemic.  Like most of Solla’s work, this piece tells a story, this one musically recreating the feel of being in an Emergency Room in the early days of the pandemic. Boccato’s drum work is evocative of the coming urgency. Solla uses the tango briefly before the group creates the hectic, frazzled and unsettling experience of being in that scary scene. Mike Fahie’s trombone provides an expressive solo, a voice that seems to be expressing his bewilder, lonely feel. The rest of the group adds to the cacophonic, unfettered frenzy of being there.

“Para el Agua” or “For the Water” was originally written as a solo piano piece by Solla. Here he arranges the music for the larger chamber group. Sara Caswell’ s violin lays out the opening lines over Boccato’s trap cadenced work and Solla’s ostinato piano work. Smith’s trumpet and Armacost’s bass clarinet and Zanetti’s bandoneon all add to the mix before Solla takes his most melodically gorgeous and harmonically inventive piano solo of the album. The arrangement bustles with tonal ideas that make this one stand out.

The final piece of the suite is subtitled “The Loss” and according to the liner notes was inspired by poetry. Solla’s piano spells out t moving ballad beautifully.  The group sets up the tension, the section swelling to evoke the coming loss. Edward Perez’s double bass offers a most facile and imaginative pizzicato solo that conjures up personal loss here. Perez is accompanied by intuitive violin work by Caswell and some emotive bandoneon work by Zanetti that sets the sorrowful mood perfectly

Solla is a master of the new tango and here he seems to be evoking the progressiveness of Miles Davis approach to music by naming this “Miles Tango.” This is not your father’s tango. Solla take the dance form and enlivens it with some of his most searching piano work on the album. The brass section wails- the rhythm section adds some funk bass and drum lines- Smith’s muted trumpet soars through the ozone. Solla creates some complex lines for the group to navigate as a unit and they do so precisely until the abrupt stop at the coda.

“Bird Song” is one of the most sonically inventive of the Solla’s songs, in no small part due to Sara Caswell’s violin eerily creating bird sounds that work so well with this composition. The music was commissioned by a chamber music ensemble from San Antonio, Texas. Solla envisioned a bird that flew easily between Mexico and Texas at the border, unencumbered by customs or immigration rules. Not only was the bird free, but this avian creature could also dance to Solla’s wonderful folk-inspired music. The group was a cornucopia of sounds weaving a magical environment- flutes, trumpets, woodwinds, piano, bandoneon- that created a splendid background for Caswell’s precocious bird. This cinematic piece is aural delight.

“La Carta” (The Letter) opens with a moving interaction between Caswell’s violin and Solla’s repeating piano lines. In the notes, Solla acknowledges that having been involved in the Ritmo project, where he orchestrated some of the great Chick Corea’s music, indelibly had an impact on his own playing. Solla confess that the piano ostinato on this one could easily have been inspired by Corea’s own “Children’s Song.” No matter what influences, here Solla’s music is a heartfelt, wordless letter that blossoms like a flower burgeoning to the warm light of the sun. The orchestration is gorgeous, as Solla blends the sounds of violin, clarinet, bass clarinet, bowed bass, and subtle percussive accents to his ringing, monotone piano lines.  After hearing this once, it’s almost impossible for the listener not to play it back multiple times to absorb the artistry of this gem of music making.

The final cut on the album is the only composition that uses voice as one of its elements. “De Viento y de Sal” or Of Wind and of Salt is perhaps the most traditional chamber music piece on the album and it features the gorgeously expressive voice of the Argentinian singer Sofia Tasello. The music is implemented by the sounds of Caswell violin and Zanetti’s wonderful Bandoneon. Tasello and the band deliver a fitting coda to this beautiful album.

Emilio Solla’s Handmade is truly an important album that revels in story-telling, marvels in astute arrangements, and embraces the listener in emotive feelings. It utilizes a band of talented and sympathetic musicians that bring the composer’s vision to life. As the composer says, the music is like a suite of a big hug or embrace!"   

A River Runs Through the Manhattan School of Music's Borden Auditorium

The MSM Jazz Philharmonic and Conductor Justin DiCioccio

On Friday November 7, 2014, the Manhattan School of Music School’s  Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra, under the able direction of maestro Justin DiCioccio, produced  a river of sound that washed through the school’s Borden auditorium to a packed house of music lovers.

The occasion was the  World premiere of University of South Florida’s distinguished professor Chuck Owen’s  masterful suite River Runs in its
entirety. The 2013 recording was among the nominees for the 2014 Grammy Awards in the categories of Best Instrumental Composition for Bound Away,and Best Instrumental Arrangement for Side Hikes: A Ridge Away. Both compositions are part  five-movement concerto, combining a full symphony orchestra with a jazz ensemble and jazz soloists on violin, guitar and saxophone. The soloists were the tenor saxophone firebrand Donny McCaslin, the sensitive violinist Sara Caswell and the masterful guitarist Jack Wilkins.

The music is an exhilarating compositional tour de force, combining the multiple musical voices, colors and timbres that a full orchestra can command with the individual jazz expressions of the featured solo instruments of electric guitar, tenor saxophone and violin.

On this night maestro DiCioccio was exuberant in his direction of the music, as his orchestra produced brilliant tones and waves of sound that swept over the audience in the music’s ebbs and flow. The music was conceived by Mr. Owen as a representation of multiple adventure trips he has taken canoeing and rafting down various rivers in this country. Each movement is a musical depiction of various aspects of these trips. 

The opening composition “Prologue: Dawn’s at River’s Edge” is an impressionistic  piece, all about the anticipation of waking up to nature in the early morning ready to embark on another challenging journey down the mysterious waters that lie ahead.

The Grammy nominated “Movement I: Bound Away” is a musical recollection of the shimmering light reflected off the rippling pools of the Greenbrier and New Rivers of West Virginia. The trip meanders through a gorge where the thunderous sound of the approaching rapids is the clarion call that Owens' music recreates.

“Movement II :Dark Waters , Slow Waters” is a representation of Owen's time on the Hillsborough River in Florida, A river edged with drooping cypress and lined with murky pools of ominous swampy waters. The music becomes much more tranquil as you go on a more languishing journey through the humid, moss covered banks of the Everglades. There is a sense of foreboding in this piece, an ominous feel of not really knowing what to expect around the next bend of the route.

“Movement III : Chutes and Wave Trains” is a depiction of Owen's time on the Chatooga River as he makes his way down through Georgia and South Carolina. The music compresses and swells at times, similar to the way the water is compressed when funneled through a restrictive chute carved out of the architecture of the river banks; building up pressure and speed, only to be released on the other side of the obstruction, into the opening calm.

“Movement IV: Side Hikes- A Ridge Away” This Grammy nominated composition is inspired from Owen's trips to the Green River in Utah and the Colorado River in Colorado,  and was also adapted from the CD Ridgelines, a recording made by the saxophonist Jack Wilkins ( no relation to the guest guitarist) who was the featured saxophonist on the original recording. The unifying factor in both pieces is the concept of reaching a nearby ridge for an overview of your surroundings. Finally reaching the ridge you see many other ridges in your horizon, many never to be experienced, always just a “Ridge Away” from your reach. The composition appropriately creates a wistful  sense of longing for the next great adventure.

“Movement V: Perhaps the Better Claim: The River  of No Return” With a line borrowed from Robert Frost’s haunting poem “A Road Not Taken”, Owen's chooses this title for a musical trip down Idaho’s Salmon River, a river known for its fierce rapids, its deep canyon, its treacherous terrain and its stunning scenery. The musical depiction sent the occupants of this auditorium-on-pontoons into a swirling and satisfying conclusion.

The music was masterfully played by the MSM’s Jazz Philharmonic, who conquered the suite's demanding musical nuances, creating the atmosphere that so brilliantly depicts the natural musical sounds of the river rafting experience.

The soloists were in top form. Ms. Caswell was particularly poignant when her violin was featured as a soloist and at times in counterpoint to her two fellow soloists. Saxophonist McCaslin is a firebrand of a player. He always brings a sense of energy and excitement to his work. He was particularly effective producing a "waves of sound” deluge that flowed from his horn much like the rapids of Owen's compositions. Guitarist Jack Wilkins was playing a Fender Telecaster through an amp and the sound was unfortunately somewhat muted from where I sat. Wilkins is one of those players whose technique is precise and immaculately clean; a consummate player whose melodic solos, (the ones I was I was able to hear clearly), were fluid, fleet and precise. His interplay with McCaslin was particularly noteworthy as the two fed off of each other brilliantly. 

Mr. Owen was in the audience for this performance and in speaking to him briefly afterwards he was obviously gratified to see his music performed so admirably.

To be able to imitate the sounds of nature; to be able to magically reproduce the rapturous feeling one can get from communing in the woods on such an endeavor as white river rafting or hiking is an extraordinary achievement.  I related to this album when I first reviewed it back in July of 2013 ( click here for a link to that review.) Now having seen it performed live by the MSM Jazz Philharmonic it only reinforces my original convictions. If you get a chance to see this work performed live and you enjoy commuting with nature you will not be disappointed with this brilliant piece of music.