El Pricto

El Pricto

as, cl, *1977
Jazz

Born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1977, mostly a self-taught musician. His major formal musical education comes from approximately 3 years of particular lessons and friendship with catalan composer Joan Carles Sender. As a composer/arranger his first experience comes from working as musical producer for TV and short films since around 1998, immediately after completing a degree in sound engineering. In October 2001 he moved to Barcelona, where he currently lives. Since then he has developed his own compositional style, influenced by rock, jazz, avant garde, serialism, post-minimalism, noise, hardcore and other genres. In 2008 together with Arco y Flecha Productions he co-created The Filthy Habits Ensemble, an 8 piece band that intertwines instrumental music by Frank Zappa with free improvisation. After its conception this ensemble has performed in various Jazz festivals in Spain (Terrassa, Pamplona, Sigüenza, Vic, Tárrega, Cantabria, etc.) and in major european Zappa festivals like the Zappanale (Germany) and Zappamundo Festivals (Portugal). They were special guests for the Spanish Night in 2012 at Jazzahead! festival in Bremen. Their repertory has been expanded to play music by other authors, including Igor Stravinski, Les Baxter, Edgar Varese and himself. He performs on clarinet, alto saxophone and conducting improvisations as well as arranging, selecting the music and creating the shows they perform in each concert. They have received a residence at the Jamboree Jazz club in Barcelona to play each month starting in October, 2013. In April 2011 he created Discordian Records, a Net Label for independent music that has its own recording facilities in Barcelona, Spain. Originally conceived as a platform for interchange between musicians dedicated to improvised music, it has become a referent for Barcelona’s underground avant music scene. He records, produces and promotes projects for musicians mostly from the improvising musical scene in Barcelona, as well as his own projects. Through this kind of meta-project he has developed compositional techniques for creating music that does not need to be rehearsed, a kind of non-rehearsal dogma imposed by the present musical situation in Barcelona. At the moment he continues developing this way of proceeding with other composers from the city that have adhered to what might be called “The Discordian Community”. He is also active organizing concerts in Barcelona, along with Arco y Flecha Productions he organizes a yearly festival called Discordian Community Riot!!! where many musicians of the avant garde scene perform together and in different formations in a 4 hour concert marathon. He also organizes concerts of improvised music along with composer Owen Killfeather in different clubs in Barcelona In 2012 El Pricto was comissioned to compose a piece celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Europe Jazz Network, performed by The Italian Instabile Orchestra in Bari, Italy at Teatro Petruzzelli. He is currently working in the music for a 50 minute concert/show for the singer Iván “El Negro” García to be performed by the contemporary music ensemble of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra at The Latin American Contemporary Music Festival in Caracas, Venezuela in 2014.