By Ferruccio Martinotti
While all around us certainties crumble one after another, one remains
intact: the creative streak of the Berlin-based, Argentine-born, ace
musician Camila Nebbia shows no signs of drying up. After an incredible run
of albums in 2025, so high-quality that it’s almost impossible to rank them
(don’t even try, just get them), Nebbia doesn’t let our turntables cool down
and returns with the album “Noche y Niebla,” an equal partnership with Luis
Nacht on tenor and soprano saxophone, supported by the rhythm section of
Jeronimo Carmona (double bass) and Fermin Merlo (drums), while she on tenor,
as a rule.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1959, Luis began his formative journey
studying the flute in Mexico City, taking his first steps as a professional
musician touring Central America and Europe as a flutist and singer with the
latin music band Grupo Sur. He later moved to New York and began playing
saxophone, taking lessons from George Coleman and Richie Beirach. His
collaborations include, among others, Actis Dato, Iannacone, Giunta, Otero,
Hoogland, Hecht, Verdinelli, and Perez, and a series of prestigious awards
earned at home and in Europe contribute to defining his stature as a
musician. Jeronimo Carmona is a double bassist with a solid trajectory in
foundational Argentine jazz ensembles and collaborator of Luis Nacht for
over two decades. Fermin Merlo stands out for his rhythmic creativity and
deep understanding of interaction in free improvisation, having worked
alongside Nacht for more than ten years.
After many encounters on stage and
in the student/teacher dynamics, Luis and Camila meet again in a Buenos
Aires studio, attempting, through aesthetically and generationally diverse
perspectives, to define sonic paths that unravel in the nocturnal mists of
the amazing cover picture and perhaps also of their names, which translated
as Night and Fog. We don’t know if this is a joke or an induced suggestion,
but what is certain is that the final result fully achieves the intended
goal, offering us a labyrinth that challenges the listener, not by
imprisoning him in tangles of sounds he can’t unravel, but, on the contrary,
by showing him the way out, or rather, multiple ways out, according to
different everyone’s sensibilities, provided he follows the directions
simply hinted at by the musicians.
A distinctive feature of the album is the
working method used, establishing, before recording, the titles of the
pieces, which serve as narrative coordinates within which to let the
improvisation flow, unfolding between stories, intrigue and mystery, without
ever drying up into sterile conceptualism and thus losing the emotional
intensity expressed in dramatic and dreamlike plots that constitute the
album’s hallmark. The interplay and the resulting play of references among
Nacht and Nebbia is wonderful, perfectly met by the powerhouse of Merlo and
Carmona and, as always, it’s interesting to hear what the protagonists have
to say about. Nebbia: “Improvisation in ‘Noche y Niebla’ is a radical
commitment to the present moment. We are not only searching for melody but
for the expression of sound in its most solid and stripped-down state. It is
a sound that is found and shaped in the fog, right at the moment of
execution.” Nacht: “This album is the continuation of many years of work,
taken to a new conceptual limit. My lyricism collides with Camila’s sonic
purity and that tension becomes the true composition of the record. Having
Merlo and Carmona, musicians with whom I share more than years of history,
gives this freedom an essential rhythmic anchor”. As in every great free
album, the architecture is very solid and only the excellent skills of the
musicians are able to make it invisible to the listener: Noche y Niebla is
a paradigmatic example, don’t miss it.