Author name: Andres

This summer, instead of spending my days between Ibiza’s beaches, folk parties and long summer islander nights, I found myself in New York. Between July 27th and August 9th, I played seven concerts between New York City and the Hamptons Jazz Festival, invited by Joel Chriss, director of the Hamptons Jazz Festival and founder and director of Ibiza Jazz Point Festival, which takes place every October. Joel has been an agent for some of the biggest legends in jazz: Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman and many others. Through Jazz Point, we became friends, and this friendship eventually led to this invitation to come and play jazz in America. It was my first time playing and visiting America, playing with American musicians and bands. There is something quite special about being an Ibicenco jazz musician arriving in New York to play jazz, in the place where so much of this music was born, developed and continues to live. So, here we go! My first concerts in New York and the Hamptons The first concert was on July 29th, with the Thomas Majcherski Quartet at the Hamptons Jazz Festival in Bridgehampton. The following days I was back in New York City, playing with the Eric Person Organ Trio at Albert’s Bar in Times Square. From the quiet surroundings of the Hamptons to the middle of Manhattan in less than 24 hours, quite a change of scenery. Then, on August 1st, I returned to the Hamptons to play with Grammy award winner Wayne Escoffery Quartet in Sag Harbor. Playing alongside him and the band was another completely different experience. We had EJ Strickland on drums, Ugonna Okegwo on double bass, and Lawrence Fields on piano. A few days later, on August 5th, I played with the Patrick Cornelius Quartet in Bridgehampton, featuring Rudy Royston on drums. And then came the final two nights. Playing Smalls Jazz Club in Manhattan August 7th and 8th, at Smalls Jazz Club in Manhattan, a legendary club. I played with Ricky Ford’s Quintet, together with an incredible band: Barry Altschul on drums, known for his work with Chick Corea and Paul Bley, and Mark Soskin and Jerome Harris, both of whom were part of Sonny Rollins’ band for 20 years. Ricky Ford himself started his career playing in Charles Mingus 5tet, Duke Ellington Big Band and Lionel Hampton. It was a crazy, beautiful experience, a life trip, felt like a movie and I couldn’t have been more welcomed by the audiences, my hosts, and the musicians I played with. Thank you so much! See you very soon!

Finally, after a long year working on this album, our space odyssey album ”Ride to Heaven” is out. The idea on this album began after our showcase at JazzIAm Barcelona, in March 2025 with the Cosmic Trio (Mateusz Smoczynski on violin/baritone violin, Ramón López on drums and tabla, and me on marimba, piano and castanets). It went so well and the impression on the present professionals was so palpable, we had to present this special trio music in a professionally recorded album. From the decision in March 2025 until the recording in May 2025, my job was to get together all the music for it, and have the album both make musical sense and tell a story. It was not until the end of March 2025, around the 27th of March, that I composed the title track ”Ride to Heaven”, in one of those Ibizan crazy composing nights at 3 a.m, and then it was clear which was to be the direction of the album. The following pieces came together little by little, putting together some of my oldest compositions (Acceptance Steps and Debussy Dances) with compositions written between 1 month or 2 weeks before the recording itself. ”The Docks” was written in April 2025, when I was playing in Galicia, sitting on the city dock at sunset time, it just came to me magically. Fly Low, Fly High was written 2 weeks before recordings, for example. The recording process was beautiful, we chose the studio of Mateusz’ brother, Jan Smoczynski in Nieporet, Poland, ”Tokarnia 2.0”, in a lake village 30min from Warsaw. An all green scenery, humid by the lake’s proximity, staying in a wooden, big hotel, and the general calm, almost empty ambience helped so much on creating this album. We recorded all in 2 full days, having to say ”Ride to Heaven” was the most difficult to record, it was literally a ”Ride to Heaven” and conveying such a strong message into a song cannot be done that easily without having previously on it. After the recordings, I went to Berlin, to work on the sound with our sound engineer, Klaus Scheuermann, who works from his studio 4Ohm, in Kreuzberg. The city caused a big impression on me, and it was such a different working ambience to composing in Ibiza or recording in a polish lake village. Luckily, we did a good job and the sound allowed the music to convey well into the future audiences. From this point, the point was to get the album into a label, I wanted to release in Germany, as the country is welcoming us and our music with such open arms, that I found it was the best we could do to give back. After some months, I found the cool people of XJAZZ! from Berlin, who manage a label under the same name, with distribution from ”The Orchard”, a filial of Sony Music. This was the perfect fit for our music.   The previous 4 months before the release have been of non-stop 24h/7 work. Having created myself the album cover, dealt with the rest of physical edition designs, PR agency, PR materials, printing,.. it’s really a miracle that I managed to get all done while delivering my best in concerts at the same time (Essaouira in December, Ibiza in February, Cádiz and Stuttgart in March, and Hamburg on the same release day).  Now all is left is for all of you to enjoy this album. Thank you so much for tuning in! When destiny calls, we must ride into it; that’s the spirit behind Andrés Coll’s new album’s title“Ride to Heaven”. From beginning to end, the album unfolds as a musical/spacial odyssey(structured as in a dramatic play), through universal human themes: courage, nature’s call, hope,farewells, and the spirit of adventure. Joined by Mateusz Smoczyński and Ramón López, thetrio presents their hovering/above ground sound, ”The Avant-Groove”. Ride to Heaven is botha title and a message: an invitation to ride toward one’s destiny with joy and courage, tofearlessly embrace life as a whole.    You can listen to the full album here: https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/artist/324Go7ruX1upDVaaP1RHAn?si=M6GcmGi2TWGyKi0uhuuY4Q And support the music by acquiring a physical/digital copy here: https://andrescollodyssey.bandcamp.com/album/ride-to-heaven