Ngen-Kürüf “A string of wind”
A string of wind connects and unleashes the beauty of this record, aerial like Ngen-kürüf, the spirit who in Mapuche cosmology owns the air and is said to manifest in the wind’s song. Such mood guides this journey and ties it together, a journey where the musician takes his beloved homeland to
other lands, paying on the lightest and clearest of all strings: the whisper of music.
Throughout eight compositions the Chilean guitarist Álvaro Severino gives a new interpretation of
the diverse sound geography of South America, exploring some of its rhythms and the meaning these develop when, faraway from home, they return though the spiral shell of remembrance. Joropo, chacarera, cueca, vidala, jazz harmony, contemporary music and cross-cultural memory add up to the wonderful personal journey proposed by this delicate work.
If to remember is to re-play the strings of the heart, then Álvaro Severino plays this fabric weaved onto his guitar’s fingerboard, proving his extraordinary talent and poetic vision in his first work. The artist, currently based in the German Ruhr Area, joins a quartet with talented musicians from NYC,
Bogotá and Santiago de Chile, to draw a map of integration and introspection, ranging from North to South and leading us to the greatest of treasures: the intimacy of his personal sound.
ALVARO SEVERINO guitar & compositions / RYAN CARNIAUX trumpet & flugelhorn /JOAN CHÁVEZ double bass /PABLO SÁEZ drums
Text By Miguel Veras Cifras,Writer, musicologist and director of the radio program Holojazz on radioUniversidad de Chile, translated by Glauconar Yue
Now Available on CD
