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Marcos Pin

MARCOS PIN Jazz Guitarist and composer.

Marcos Pin, Galician guitarist and composer , is one of the names you hear again and again, when talking about Jazz in Spain. Heir to the hard bop tradition led by guitarists as Jimmy Raney or Tal Farlow to name a couple, Pin defends the beauty in his sound and flow of his solo lines but with an originality of ideas that fit contemporary times. A modern sound that comes directly as evolution of the great Jazz tradition.

Born october, 1974, Marcos started playing guitar at 8 years of age. Lugo, his hometown was not a “Jazz place” at all. As a teenager, he played pop, blues, rock and folk styles until he discovered Jazz. And that was through the only Jazz radio broadcasting program at the time: “Jazz porque Si”. Listening to Juan Claudio Cifuentes, conductor and newsreader of the program, he realized that this was what he wanted to do in life as a musician.

Really hard to get recordings at the time!, no internet, no jazz record shops, Lugo was kind of a desert, musically speaking, but still, an oasis existed!: Club “Clavicémbalo” was the place. A nice venue where catalonian musicians used to play. Right there he started getting some answers and most important: LP´s!!!...making copies in old cassettes, every album was a treasure, not many, but listening until exhausted was the point.

Right after that period, about ten years long, he enrolled in the Royal Conservatory, the Netherlands. Main thing there: to play/ think Jazz 24 hours, 7 days!. Right there he met Thanos Athanasopulos, great tenor saxophonist from Greece. The two of them played hundred if not thousand gigs together and they run the project “Athanasopoulos/Pin Jazz Quartet” for about 10 years now.

After accomplishing his studies Marcos moved back to Spain where he teaches (Estudio Escola de Música) and survives as a freelance guitarist and composer trying to get the best to his two sons and wife.

Discography as a leader:

Directions (Marcos Pin Trio) FreeCode Jazz Records 2007 Pin Cirera Legido Martinez FreeCode Jazz Records 2007 Maybe in Other Life (Organic Collective) Audia Records 2008 Knock Before (Athanasopoulos-Pin Jazz Quartet) FreeCode Jazz Records 2009 Modern Money Mechanics (Athanasopoulos-Pin Jazz Quartet) Free Code Jazz Records 2009 Groovy Meditation (Organic Collective) 2012 Barbanza (Marcos Pin Factor E-Reset) FreeCode Jazz Records 2012 DUOLOGY, Session 1 feat. Yago Vazquez FreeCode Jazz Records 2013 DUOLOGY, Take a Second feat.

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26
Album Review

Marcos Pin: Broken Artist

Read "Broken Artist" reviewed by James Nadal


Santiago de Compostela, Spain, is famous for the religious pilgrimage, but in the jazz world it is gaining a reputation as a breeding ground for premier musicians. A host of piano players make the area home, so guitarist Marcos Pin easily stands out in the crowd. The hard bop influenced Broken Artist is his tenth release as leader, representing a focused trajectory and commitment to craft. This project is based around six compositions which depict a day in ...

19
Album Review

Telmo Fernandez and Marcos Pin: Take A Second

Read "Take A Second" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay


As the name suggests, Take A Second is number two in guitarist Marcos Pin's Duology series. Pin's long-term plan is to record a series of ten albums in duet with a range of musicians. As plans go, it's not the most complicated ever hatched, but the two albums that have so far seen daylight suggest that it's certainly a plan worth putting into practice. Pin recorded his first Duology album, Session 1 (Free Code Jazz Records, 2014) with ...

4
Album Review

Marcos Pin and Yago Vazquez: Marcos Pin: Duology

Read "Marcos Pin: Duology" reviewed by Mike Oppenheim


Duology: Session 1 features the duet playing of guitarist Marcos Pin and pianist Yago Vazquez. The album is a tour through some of the most popular jazz standards. The duo format and individual talents of Pin and Vazquez bring a life and energy to the tunes, revealing the depth and potential in even the most frequently heard standards.The album consists of Charlie Parker's “Donna Lee" and “Dewey Square," Thelonious Monk's “Blue Monk," Jerome Kern's ever-present “All the Things ...

7
Album Review

Marcos Pin: Duology Session 1

Read "Duology Session 1" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


Galician guitarist Marcos Pin is no stranger to ambitious projects. His Barbanza (Free Code Jazz Records, 2012) was a cinematic, expansive large ensemble work that fused modal jazz orchestration with his native musical heritage. His Duology is much more intimate yet no less challenging an undertaking. It will consist of ten separate sessions, each a duet with a like-minded colleague. The first of these is with pianist Yago Vàzquez who perfectly complements Pin on a series of five standards the ...

6
Multiple Reviews

Marcos Pin: Duology / Barbanza

Read "Marcos Pin: Duology / Barbanza" reviewed by Chris Mosey


Marcos Pin is one of the most interesting jazz guitarists in Europe. On his latest album, Duology, the Spaniard teams up with pianist Yago Vazquez to explore the fast, fluid bebop tradition of such stellar axemen as Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney. It follows hard on the heels of Barbanza, featuring a ten-piece band which showcases Pin's talents as writer, arranger and leader. That one in turn appeared shortly after a new album by ...

7
Album Review

Marcos Pin Factor E-Reset: Barbanza

Read "Barbanza" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


Spanish guitarist, composer and arranger {[Marcus Pin}}'s debut as a leader of a large ensemble follows the legacy and the aesthetics of mainstream American jazz with great love and owes little to the rich musical cultures of the Iberian peninsula. Pin focuses Barbanza on his strengths as an arranger who is well-versed in the vocabulary of cool jazz and early be-bop. The six original compositions of Pin and the cover of John Coltrane's “Moment's Notice" are structured ...

14
Album Review

Marcos Pin Factor-E Reset: Barbanza

Read "Barbanza" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Galician guitarist Marcos Pin has recorded in trio or quartet settings for a decade, so the dectet that interprets Barbanza represents a significant change in his modus operandi. Judging by the results though, you'd think he'd been composing for larger ensembles from the get go. Inspired by the Barbanza region of Galicia in north-west Spain, you might expect Iberian flavored music, but instead, the short-lived large ensembles of trumpeter Miles Davis and saxophonist Cannonball Adderley--and their post-bop quintets--seem to inform ...

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“... Pin is a born improviser. He loves his guitar and makes love along every piece generating free structures that allow him to play his broad ones without boring the audience not even an instant. " Félix Amador-Gálvez. Jazz ese Ruido

"... Marcos Pin, beautiful sound and amazing sense of tempo... " Victor Bobeche, Districto Jazz.

"Marcos Pin is a marvellous and magnificent Galician guitarist who throughout the years has been standing out and appearing as performer, composer and arranger." Juan Carlos Abelenda, Jazz Recordings.

“...Pin's arrangements mix big band swing and bop influences with great success, resulting in an album which harks back to the middle of the twentieth century while sounding exciting, fresh and cool in the twenty-first.” Bruce Lindsay, All About Jazz.

Primary Instrument

Guitar

Location

Barcelona

Willing to teach

Intermediate to advanced

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Broken Artist

Free Code Jazz Records
2016

buy

Take A Second

Free Code Jazz Records
2015

buy

Marcos Pin: Duology

Free Code Jazz Records
2014

buy

Duology Session 1

Free Code Jazz Records
2014

buy

Barbanza

Free Code Jazz Records
2013

buy

San Finx

From: Barbanza
By Marcos Pin

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