For the album Sorte, three musicians from the Iberian Peninsula have joined forces to record atmospherically strong music that is freely improvised and surprisingly independent, except for the roughly given framework of the pieces. The jazz pianist from Santiago de Compostela and namesake of the trio Abe Rábade, for which also Pablo Martin Caminero on bass and Bruno Pedroso on drums are active, studied music in his birthplace sand at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1996, he formed a first Abe Rábade Trio with two fellow Berklee students. Participation in the Gexto International Jazz Festival in 2000 earned the pianist, whose real name is Abelardo Xesús Rábade Villar, an award that established his fame in Europe outside Spain.

The trio's bassist Pablo Martín Caminero, who studied double bass at the Bilbao and Vitoria Conservatories, is active in jazz as well as in classical music and flamenco. He has been a member of numerous Spanish jazz formations and under his own name he has released five albums of flamenco jazz with his band.

Bruno Pedroso has studied drums with well-known musicians of the Portuguese scene and has been teaching at the Escola de Jazz do Hot Clube. As one of the most sought-after Portuguese jazz musicians, he has been active live with different formations over the years. Since 2016, he has been a permanent part of the Joao Barradas Trio.

The pieces on the album Sorte are arranged as suites meant to represent specific states of mind. The aesthetic range of the material extends from classical music to blues, touching on the influence of the traditional music of the autonomous community of Galicia in northwestern Spain, as well as avant-garde approaches.

"Sorte" in Spanish has the meaning of "group of elements created by chance." This meaning forms the nucleus for the twelve pieces on the album, all of which are original compositions. Each of the pieces, leaving much room for improvisation, were created within a period of 3 weeks in 2018 without a stylistic corset. The final form of the pieces to be heard on the album Sorte was developed by the musicians of the trio after extensive rehearsals and live performances.

The result is a surprisingly catchy to listen Gesamtkunstwerk, which is largely carried by contemplative calm, but captivates due to musically varied ideas and unusual structuring beyond the usual jazz trio fare.

Abe Rabade, piano
Pablo Martin Caminero, doublebass
Bruno Pedroso, drums