JOSEP-MANEL VEGA

Barcelona, 1965

Unortodox self-made guitarist, composer and improviser. Contemporary jazz musician in his own way.

He started studying musical language and harmony with his grandfather (Josep Baiget),  classical guitar with several teachers (Jordi Belza, Mariano Capella, Guillem Pérez-Quer, William Waters, Danielle Kassner), contemporary music (Joan Munné, Xavier Prats) and flamenco (Manuel Castilla). However, it was by exploring on his own that he developed a personal musical language focused on improvisation, inspired by musicians such as Keith Jarret, Bill Frisell, Ralph Towner, Nguyên Lê , "high-risk" rock bands such as King Crimson or unconventional contemporary proposals such as The Bad Plus.

Nguyên Lê says that a musician should be himself at the most when he plays. That is what I strive for, humbly assuming that I am nothing more than that, but not less either.

I devotedly submit myself to the ritual of the concert, hoping to experience a state of liberation through music that, according to Keith Jarret, not even the greatest musicians achieve for more than a few brief moments at a time.

What I play is jazz, always from an open and inclusive conception of what jazz can mean. In words by Bill Frisell, a way of connecting with and transforming what surrounds us. But also progressive music, meant as open music "without rules or limits". And, moreover, contemporary: always new music, created in the present to be continuously transformed in the future.

In fact, what I have been doing for the last few years is, in essence, the construction of a vehicle through which to channel a need to give myself through music that has already been latent since my childhood.