Diego Piñera

With Berlin Odd Wisdom, Diego Piñera creates music that combines rhythmic intelligence and contemporary aesthetics in a special way. Since 2019, the Uruguayan drummer and composer has been bringing together outstanding musicians from the Berlin scene to form a formation that has developed its very own band sound: clear European, yet deeply rooted in Afro-Latin American concepts.
Piñera's compositions are precisely built yet open. The Clave Principle is central — a logic that comes from Afro-Latin American traditions and is here virtuously translated into odd time signatures. This results in pieces in which rhythm not only accompanies, but also carries, structures and tells. At the same time, the music opens up large spaces for improvisation: Each voice in the ensemble brings in a personal sound language and becomes an essential part of the overall sound.
The latest album Underground Rollercoaster (Challenge Records) consistently continues this vision. While Piñera's earlier works were more American-influenced, the focus here is clearly on European classical modernism — with Béla Bartók as a noticeable reference point in the compositional way of thinking. The result is music full of excitement, detail and energy: complex but never clumsy; modern but always physically perceptible.

D. Piñera (dr.), I. Osypov (git.), P. Ehwald (sax.), M. Krömker (b.)

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