Julho é de Jazz: Mário Laginha

It is curious to think that a musician accustomed to giving regular solo concerts should have waited nineteen years to record his second piano album. The explanation is simple: throughout this time, I have always been involved in a wide variety of projects that I have been passionate about. I cannot say there was a void; it is simply that the work of sharing music always took precedence. Time, as we know, waits for no one. But here it is, at last. Unlike Canções e Fugas (2006), Retorno has a freer structure. It includes a series of pieces I’ve been composing and improvisations created during the recording itself. I’m fascinated by this possibility of sitting down at the piano with absolutely no idea what I’m going to play. Some improvisations seem to have been partly written, others make it clear that they haven’t. Both amuse and challenge me. With this album – undoubtedly the result of my partnership with Camané over recent years – I have gradually let down the barriers I had erected between myself and fado. There is, therefore, an intentional openness to new influences which, in more or less obvious ways, are present here.

After nineteen years, I return to a solitude that, despite everything, has never been foreign to me.

– Mário Laginha