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Inspired by the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains north-west of Madrid, his home since August 2022, Milo Fitzpatrick presents Sierra Tracks – the new album from his expansive, cinematic, chamber-jazz project Vega Trails.Having cut 2022’s beautifully resonant debut album Tremors in the Static as a duo, alongside saxophonist Jordan Smart (Mammal Hands and Sunda Arc), Milo now substantially expands upon that blueprint with his follow-up, Sierra Tracks, which, as the title suggests, was conceived at his new home in central Spain and adds piano, vibraphone and strings to the mix. The beautiful Spanish countryside offered inspiration too. “The landscape here has definitely had an impact on my musical writing,” Milo explains. “I’d describe the terrain as ‘rolling to peak-y’, and you get some really beautiful colours. When it’s a blue-sky day, dusk is so cool – the whole light goes purple-pink. It’s a great time to go out for a walk and get inspired. When I write these pieces, often I’m going somewhere – sometimes physically, others it’s dream places.”
However while Sierra Tracks features an expanded line-up including pianist Taz Modi (a colleague alongside Milo in Portico Quartet’s live band) providing “some rhythmic movement behind us, to free up the bass and sax from being so busy” and vibraphone specialist Harriet Riley, multi-reedist Jordan Smart remains a key voice in Vega Trails. “Jordan has a really direct and exciting way that he connects with his instrument, and the audience,” Milo reflects. “He’s into jazz, but also folk of many traditions, and he can play different wind instruments – soprano and tenor sax, bass clarinet, the dadouk, and the Ney flute from Turkey and Armenia. Knowing his phrasing, I wrote very much with him in mind.”
Milo also re-engaged with the cello, an instrument he hadn’t played since school days, adding an extra dimension to his own sound, but it was a conversation with Gondwana Records label mate Hania Rania about recording orchestral arrangements that helped bring Sierra Tracks fully into focus. “I’d been thinking about using strings for a long time, but not just a string quartet – lots of strings! Hania was recording a film score in Warsaw and when she offered to share the session with Milo. “I realised that the palette could go quite big.”
From the epic five-minute opener, ‘Largo’, onwards, there’s a cinematic feel to ‘Sierra Tracks’, as each piece unfolds according to its own sweeping narrative, often wonderfully evocative of the mountains’ wide-open spaces, and also sometimes elaborately arranged with cello, orchestral strings, vibraphone and piano, to evoke their awe-inspiring natural splendour. ‘Reverie’ has a refrain that fades in and out, like a daydream”. ‘Els’ is more firmly rooted in folk melody, while ‘Dream House’ and ‘Sleepwalk Tokyo’ (its title referring to Milo’s Lost In Translation-style jetlag experiences in the Far East) boost a sense of otherworldliness.
A shaping influence on Milo’s vision for the record was David Toop’s seminal book, ‘Oceans of Sound’, and he perceived each track as an aural story. “I wanted to make sounds that felt equal to where I’ve been roaming in the mountains and forests out here, that reflect the incredible scale of the place. You get these huge views and skylines, which it’s hard to find words for.” The curious sounds that open the album, at the beginning of ‘Largo’, are an approximation, by Milo on cello, of a harmonic series that is often heard in the Sierra region: when the local knife-sharpeners travel around the neighbouring villages, plying their trade, they play a similar riff on pan pipes to proclaim their arrival. “You get all these announcements, from people collecting scrap iron and steel, or delivering fruit and bread, and I thought that kind of thing would make a good opening for the record.” With that colourful reference as an overture, ‘Sierra Tracks’ shapes up as a love letter to the rocky landscape within which its creator now resides. It is also, he says, about his mental-health journey out of the pandemic years, which have been so testing for us all.
“I had been thinking about Time, and how history repeats itself, but also how one can become trapped in thoughts, especially on difficult personal subjects, and how these become cyclical in our minds. But I also wanted to talk about how walking or running can help release oneself from these cycles and find clarity and order from tangled emotional thinking patterns. It’s like discovering a new path from your usual running route, and how that can change your perspective and help find a type of peace and acceptance.” Through the album there are motifs and melodies that repeat from one tune to another, which of course resemble cyclical thoughts and memories.
“So, to me,” Milo concludes, “this record is an exploration of the relationship between the complex, tangled world of one’s mental processes and how moving through the tangible world, especially through nature, can help find definition and clarity.”
As such, ‘Sierra Tracks’ really is medicine for the mind, body and soul.
This concert takes place in Hallé at St Michael’s – a former Roman Catholic church, which was founded in 1859 and became the heart of the Little Italy Community in Ancoats.
This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.
Price: £16 adv
Info/tickets: https://www.heymanchester.com/vega-trails
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St Michael's Ancoats, George Leigh St,Manchester, United Kingdom
Tickets
