I wrote and produced Lamento Olvidado in winter 2020/2021, which was the darkest time of my life so far. I was stuck in a situation where no exit was in sight. As well there was pandemic, winter, no sunlight, living alone, no work, no reason nor motivation to practice the trumpet, losing embouchure and endurance… losing my music. I almost stopped being a musician. The dark time of a planet is called eclipse. This was my dark time. Nevertheless a beautiful song was the result of it and its production literally saved my life.
The title is in Spanish and means forgotten or lost lament. A lament is a song somebody sings with sorrow, distress or pain. Meaning somebody was singing the sorrows out of the heart but nobody listened, so it was lost and gone for ever. The melody came up in some of those lonely nights and fortunately I managed to record it so it didn’t get lost for ever.
I wanted to have this Spanish ambience and heat in the music I knew from Miles Davis’ „Sketches of Spain“ or maybe „Miles Ahead“. I achieved it mostly by the ornamentation of the Flugelhorns melodies together with the sound of the flute and the chords of the Rhodes Piano.
The song is also a tribute to the great trumpet player Wallace Roney and his genius album Mistérios. He died last year (2020). Wallace was Miles’ only student and Miles used to call him as his substitute, when he couldn’t play a gig.
The bass line and the percussion are derived from salsa, so if you want to label the style of music one could call it latin jazz.
credits
from Eclipse,
released March 3, 2022
Bodo Maier - trumpet, composition, production
Max Treutner - tenor sax,
Matthieu Trovato - Fender Rhodes
Roberto Koch - bass
Freddy Benitez - percussion
Florian Haas Schneider - drums
recorded & mixed by Benjamin Gut
mastered by Erik Zobler Zed Mastering L.A.
video by Pascal Isenschmid
camera - rhapsodist, Gergö Nyirö, Kim Howland
