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Nexus From Guitarist Jordi Farres

ByJoe Barth

Joe Barth asks Spanish guitarist Jordi Farres about the making of this record, Nexus, in which he musically dialogues with himself through overdubbing.

Photo: Gracia Gata

JB:  On your new album, Nexus, talk about the tuneful track “Despertar” that opens the album. 

JF:  “Despertar” means Wake Up in Catalan and Spanish. This was also the initial intention of the project, an attitude after going through some difficult months, emotionally speaking. Musically, it is a very simple song that guides listeners to the spaces and environments they will encounter throughout the album, and at the same time, it serves as a brief introduction to one important song on the CD.

JB:  The album consists entirely of your original songs.  Did you compose this music for this particular project?

JF:  Yes, tracks 1 to 8 were written this past year for this project, conceived as a kind of suite, designed to be listened to in succession, like a descriptive film. Then I wanted to add a couple of acoustic tracks that had already been composed previously. The bonus track with orchestra is a single that I released a few years ago on digital platforms but that was not part of any album, and I thought it was a very good way to close this adventure.

JB:  Talk briefly about how you go through your compositional process.

JF:  I don’t consider myself a composer, but a musician and guitarist who sometimes writes some songs. I’m not very methodical when composing. When a clear idea comes to me, I try to play it while also improvising, and I work on everything at the same time, both melody, harmony, and rhythms. When I’m lucky, I can visualize it very clearly, but it’s not something that always happens when I want. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work, but I try to work continuously, so things are always happening, and those things will surely be part of the music that is yet to come.

JB:  Why, in using overdubs, do you do the album as a duet with yourself?

JF:  In this project, I felt that I needed to work completely alone, starting from scratch and experimenting with where I could reach both on a compositional and interpretative level. It has been a kind of work of personal and musical introspection. I didn’t want to make a solo guitar album; I feel that it is not the time yet, maybe it will be the next one, and I really enjoyed being able to freely improvise solos of melodic lines on some interesting and new harmonic bases, like a sensation similar to flying.

JB:  The music is in memory of your late guitarist friend, Jordi Bonell.  Reflect upon his impact on you.

JF:  Jordi Bonell is the undisputed reference in the field of electric guitar in Spain for the last 50 years, an incredible musician, but also a very close friend for 30 years and a kind of mentor in his last years. His way of understanding music and life has filtered into my own way of doing and being, something for which I will always be grateful. On a strictly musical level, I believe that his melodic and phrasing capacity, and also his listening, concentration, and adaptability, are just on another level.

JB:  After Jordi Bonell died, his family gave you one of his guitars, and you used this guitar on this recording. Talk about that instrument.

JF:  Yes, it is the instrument I play in songs 1 to 8. It is a Soulezza guitar, made by a mutual friend here in Spain, Fernado de Oleza. It is a headless guitar, very small, designed for traveling. Semi-hollow mahogany body and a thin cedar top, short scale like Gibson, with a very narrow mahogany/ebony neck, and two full humbuckers. A completely different instrument from what I usually play, like single coil telecasters or Josep Melo acoustic archtops.

JB:  Tell us about the bluesy “Bluesion” with the symphony orchestra that closes the album.

JF:  It is a piece that I imagined during the COVID period and recorded in 2021. I visualized the contrast between the blues that I am passionate about, American popular music, and contemporary European atonal orchestral music. I wanted to unify in a single piece the different ways I have of understanding the blues, both at the harmonic and rhythmic levels and in phrasing. I was lucky enough to collaborate with my dear friend Carles Cases, a great Spanish composer, really well known here in my country, with whom I have worked a lot over the last 20 years.

Joe Barth began playing guitar in high school. He stopped playing in his late twenties only to rediscover his love for jazz guitar in his mid-forties. He is an Associate Pastor at Snoqualmie Valley Alliance Church near Seattle. He plays and writes about jazz guitar as a hobby. Before entering the pastorate, Dr. Barth taught church music at Simpson University, Multnomah University, and Crafton Hills College. While serving as a music professor, he was also a music pastor in local churches. Dr. Barth is the author of Voices in Jazz Guitar: Great Performers Tell about Their Approach to Playing (Mel Bay) available at Amazon.com and elsewhere.

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