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Agusti Fernandez

Agustí Fernández (Palma de Mallorca, 1954), with a perfectly based career and a well-deserved international reputation, is one of the Spanish musicians of major international projection and a world reference in the field of improvised music. Fernández has worked with famous musicians of the free improvisation scene like Peter Kowald, Derek Bailey, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Mats Gustafsson, Joel Ryan and Peter Evans a.m.o. He is a member of the Blue Shroud Band and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra,  and has been in Mats Gustafsson NU Ensemble and Barry Guy New Orquestra. Up to the current date he has published more than 150 CD’s.

«Agustí Fernández is one of the most important explorers of avant-garde music in Spain, combining his thorough knowledge of 20th-century modern classical piano with jazz free improvisation to a forge a unique and powerful style” (The Village Voice, New York).

He has also worked with the recognised composer of contemporary music Héctor Parra who composed FREC, a solo for expanded piano, in collaboration with the pianist. FREC has been premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2013 with the collaboration of the video artist Lucas Caraba.

He has conducted various improvised music ensembles like Ad Libitum Ensemble (Varsaw), Free Art Ensemble (Barcelona), Ansambl Studio 6 (Lujbljana) Orquesta FOCO (Madrid), Entenguerengue (Jérez de la Frontera), Impromtu Ensemble (Valencia), etc.

Awards and recognition

Along his professional life Agustí Fernández has received much recognition. His solo for piano «Mutza» presented in New York in 2007 was distinguished by the New York magazine AllAboutJazz as one of 10 best concerts from that year. The CD «Un llamp que no s’acaba mai» on PSI (Agustí Fernández, John Edwards and Mark Sanders) has been distinguished by Allaboutjazz as one of the best 10 cd’s in 2009; the CD «Aurora» on Maya Recordings (Agustí Fernandez, Barry Guy and Ramón López) was selected by Cuadernos de Jazz magazine as the best CD in 2007, by the Jaç magazine as the best fourth disc of the history of the Catalan jazz and it was Disc d’émoi (February, 2007) for the French Jazz Magazine. The ”Agustí Fernández Aurora Trio” received the second prize at the BMW Welt Jazz Award 2012 celebrated in Münich, Germany.

In 2000 he received the Festival Altaveu Award, Sant Boi de Llobregat (Catalonia). In 2001 he received the FAD – Sebastià Guasch Award, Barcelona (Cataluña) with Andrés Corchero por el or the performance “A modo de esperanza”.

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7
Album Review

Barry Guy Blue Shroud Band: all this this here

Read "all this this here" reviewed by John Sharpe


Bassist and composer Barry Guy combines a number of his passions on All This This Here in a stunning act of synthesis. For the third major work for his Blue Shroud Band, following its eponymous debut (Intakt, 2016) and Odes And Meditations For Cecil Taylor (Not Two, 2018), Guy sets to music Nobel winning playwright Samuel Beckett's last poem What Is The Word (in two versions, both the original French and the English translation, which bookend the program).

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Album Review

Martin Kuchen, Agusti Fernandez, Zlatko Kaucic: The Steps That Resonate

Read "The Steps That Resonate" reviewed by John Sharpe


Once improvisers reach a certain level of experience, it is rare that a meeting between them does not deliver the goods. By this stage they are well versed in the mechanics of collective music making off the map. They have developed a fine sense of when to play and when not, how much they can respond without it becoming predictable, and a host of other similarly arcane split-second decisions which happen faster than thought. But when masters of the art ...

Album Review

Küchen, Fernandez, Kaučič: The Steps That Resonate

Read "The Steps That Resonate" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


Registrato il 9 settembre 2021 a Šmartno, durante l'undicesima edizione del Brda Contemporary Music Festival, questo disco documenta l'improvvisazione realizzata dal sassofonista svedese Martin Küchen, dal pianista spagnolo Augusti Fernandez e dal batterista Zlatko Kaučič, che del festival è organizzatore e anima. Il lavoro è suddiviso in due parti (sebbene la copertina non lo riporti): la prima è una lunga improvvisazione di oltre mezzora, senza soluzione di continuità; la seconda una replica più breve, circa cinque minuti, a mo' di ...

4
Album Review

Martin Küchen, Agustí Fernandez, Zlatko Kaučič: The Steps That Resonate

Read "The Steps That Resonate" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Let's test the laws of thermodynamics with free improvisation music. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another. This law is sublimely displayed during the live performance by Martin Küchen, Agustí Fernandez, and Zlatko Kaučič at the BCMF Festival in Slovenia, in 2021. While the Spanish pianist Fernandez and drummer & percussionist Kaučič have toured and recorded together--check out their ...

1
In Pictures

Agustí Fernández, Martin Küchen and Zlatko Kaučič in Villach, Austria

Read "Agustí Fernández, Martin Küchen and Zlatko Kaučič in Villach, Austria" reviewed by Ziga Koritnik


A collection of photos from the Agusti Fernandez, Martin Kuchen and Zlatko Kaucic concert organised by Kulturforum at Kulturhof in Villach on April 3, 2022. ...

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Extended Analysis

Brass And Ivory Tales

Read "Brass And Ivory Tales" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


Innovative saxophonist Ivo Perelman celebrates his 60th birthday with the release of a magnum opus, Brass And Ivory Tales. Recorded over a period of seven years, this nine-volume box set is impressive in both its depth and breath as it matches Perelman with a different piano master per disc. The improvised duets are usually the first documented meeting between the two musicians and the instant and rapidly evolving synergy is fresh and thrilling. Both remarkable and expected is Perelman's ability ...

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Album Review

Ivo Perelman: Brass And Ivory Tales

Read "Brass And Ivory Tales" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Archeologists and cultural anthropologists theorize early humans had some form of music appreciation. They listened to the sounds wind made as it passed through trees. The breeze sounded different passing through oak than it did fir trees, and the sound was altered whether it was spring or fall. Then there were the bird songs, the first Lennon & McCartneys of the stone age. Early man replicated these melodies, with bones that could be whittled into horns or used to recreate ...

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Recording

Agusti Fernandez, Baldo Martinez and Ramon Lopez - Triez (Emarcy, 2010) ****

Agusti Fernandez, Baldo Martinez and Ramon Lopez - Triez (Emarcy, 2010) ****

Source: Free Jazz by Stef Gijssels

By Stef No doubt Spain's number one pianist in jazz is Agustí Fernández, whose playing spans the history of music, from classical over traditional jazz to avant-garde. Just to show the pianist's breadth, I confront this very accessible and almost Bill Evanesque album with Trio Local, reviewed below, bringing music totally out of the comfort zone of every listener, yet equally coherent as a trio performance. This album's title is a kind of joke, referring to the word “trio," but ...

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Recording

Agusti Fernandez, Barry Guy and Ramon Lopez - Morning Glory (Maya, 2010) ****1/2

Agusti Fernandez, Barry Guy and Ramon Lopez - Morning Glory (Maya, 2010) ****1/2

Source: Free Jazz by Stef Gijssels

By Stanley Zappa At its high points, Morning Glory is no less a musical achievement than the greatest of the great piano trios in our beloved music. Two that come to mind are the The Lowell Davidison Trio and Bill Evan's Sunday at the Village Vanguard. At their best Agusti Fernández, Barry Guy and Ramón López continue the larger, transcendent conversation begun by the players on those canonical recordings and could, for approximation reasons, be likened to a combination of ...

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