Iñaki Salvador (piano, arrangements, music director), Ainara Ortega (vocals), María Berasarte (vocals), Hasier Oleaga (drums), Aitor Bravo (drums), Javier Mayor (double bass), Ángel Unzu (guitars, bouzouki, percussion)
San Sebastián’s Iñaki Salvador has been a leading light in recent decades of Basque music and is unquestionably one of the greatest international representatives of our Jazz. Pianist, composer, arranger and teacher, he studied the piano, harmony and composition under masters including the pianists José Antonio Medina and Jesús González Alonso, as well as the composer Francisco Escudero. He basically taught himself how to play modern music and Jazz.
In his long and prolific career he has released numerous albums, fronted his own groups, created projects that have made their mark, composed soundtracks for the cinema, television, theatre and dance, as well as having worked with myriad musicians, particularly including Mikel Laboa, Perico Sambeat, Allan Skidmore, Pedro Iturralde, Jean Toussaint, Jorge Pardo, Javier Colina, Noa, Jesse Davis, David Xirgu, David Gómez, Mario Rossy, Jorge Rossy, Charles Tolliver, Raynald Colom, Mikel Andueza, Gonzalo Tejada, Joaquín Chacón, Alvin Queen…
His first participation in the San Sebastián Jazz Festival was at its 17th edition in 1982, thanks to which he won the award for best soloist in the Competition for Basque Groups. Since then, Iñaki Salvador, recipient of the Donostiako Jazzaldia Award in 2020, has become the musician to have racked up the highest number of performances at our Festival.
Iñaki Salvador worked for 25 years with the figure par excellence of Basque song, Mikel Laboa. In 2016 Bilbao’s “Loraldia” festival commissioned Iñaki Salvador to put together a new creation: a mise en scène approaching Mikel Laboa’s music from the angle of Jazz. Iñaki therefore created a quartet, which later developed into a sextet (and has now become a septet with the addition of drums). This proposal has played on several stages, particularly including their participation in Bordeaux’s Le Rocher de Palmer and the concerts given at Japan’s Kanazawa Jazz Festival in 2019.
Iñaki Salvador’s septet revisits Mikel Laboa’s music from the angle of improvised and Jazz music. Now, and for the first time in Salvador’s projects on the figure of Laboa, with texts in song, using the voice as an essential tool to turn the spotlight on both Laboa’s chosen poetry and the Basque language. To do it, he has put together a band of well known artists with solid careers to their name. The arrangements and adaptations take their inspiration from the three major artistic lines and commitments embraced by Laboa: respect for and knowledge of tradition; work focused on contemporary poetry and creation; and commitment to research and innovation.
