By Ferruccio Martinotti
Five minutes to midnight but thanks to a record like this, the game of the
2025 Top Ten is still up, clear evidence of another blasting year for our
music. Born in Buenos Aires, based in Berlin, Camila Nebbia is a saxophone
player, composer, improviser, visual artist and curator. As described on her
website, the multidisciplinary artist layers her practice through the
creation and destruction of archival memory, exploring the concept of
identity, migration and memory. Her work includes improvised and composed
music, film creation and audiovisual performances, forming a constellation
of interconnected practices. She played and recorded with many artists of
the international scene, such as Marilyn Crispell, Michael Formanek,
Angelica Sanchez, Randy Peterson, Tom Rainey, Patrick Shiroishi, Vinnie
Sperrazza, Katt Hernandez, Kenneth Jimenez, Lesley Mok, Susana Santos Silva,
Elsa Bergman, l’Arfi collective of Lyon, Joanna Mattrey, Vincent Dromoski’s
Flow Regulator, Kit Downes, among others. Co-founder together with Maria
Grand and Marta Sanchez of the independent record label label Lilaila,
curator of the concert series “A door in the mountain”, “Disfigured Rivers”
in Berlin and “Future bash reloaded”, Camila is definitely showing the
difference between a player and a musician.
We started to track her down
after the wonderful, hugely overlooked record “Colapesce” by Gabriele
Mitelli with John Edwards and Mark Sanders, enriched by her reeds as a key
feature. Then 3 records in a row bewitched us mercilessly: “in another land,
another dream” along with Angelica Sanchez; “Exhaust” with Kit Downes,
Andrew Lisle and “Hypomaniac” where she teamed up with Goncalo Almeida and
Sylvain Darrifourcq, turned on a spotlight on the South American musician,
carving her name in the stone as one of 2025’s most shining key figures. But
given that it’s not over until it’s over (to quote the Homeric Poets), at
the very tail end of the year, to complete such a bonanza, here we have a
brand new record, “A reflection distorts over water”, an astonishing combo
with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Lesley Mok.
Crispell lent her piano
to the likes of Sanchez, Braxton, Lovano, Evan Parker, Motian and Tyshawn
Sorey and met Nebbia in 2016 when the pianist was in Buenos Aires for a
residency, an encounter the saxophonist describes as a “transformational and
deeply meaningful experience”. Three years later, in 2019, Nebbia met Mok at the Banff Centre in Canada, where they immediately began to collaborate,
initiating a partnership that has evolved through a variety of shifting
projects such as the collectives “Yo no sè de pajaros” and “La permanencia
de los ecos”. In recent years Mok, an essential member of bands led by Myra
Melford and Anna Webber, has emerged as one of the most creative
percussionists on the New York scene, whether leading a tentet or sharing
the duties with pianist Philip Golub in the improvising duo “Dream Brigade”.
The making of this record is the perfect epitome of an approach to the music
that finds nothing comparable with: the ladies meet up in Woodstock for
dinner and the following day the new born trio set up at Nevessa Studio
without any prior rehearsal. Just one composition provided by Mok
(“Longing”), a few open sketches by Nebbia, the rest fully improvised and
that’s it, 45 minutes of free gourmandise ready to be served on the table.
As soon as the first notes start floating in the space, the sound of Nebbia’s sax is affirming itself as her own signature: breathy, warm,
extroverted, intriguing and melodic, granting a mutual, enjoyable and
captivating tension among the trio. The music unroll syncopated fragments,
interchanged with semi-circular textures, everything is essential, smoothly
balanced the tasks of piano and percussion, never self-indulgent, not a
single sequence is wasted, stripped down but not algid and aseptic, on the
contrary warm, emotional and ardent: call it a labour of love. “The whole
trip felt like a dream, between the jet lag and the immense happiness I was
feeling, everything seemed surreal. Beyond the musical experience, it left
me with a deep sense of how vital true human connection is in what we do”,
said Nebbia about this project. Buenos Aires calling, leave the line free!