Video of the Day: Jim Hart’s Cloudmakers share full Abbey Road recording session for new album featuring Leo Genovese

In 2009, vibes virtuoso Jim Hart first came together with Michael Janisch and Dave Smith to create Cloudmakers Trio. Since then their powerfully original vision has grown and sustained an international touring career, keeping them at the forefront of contemporary instrumental music in an exciting, horizon-spanning space where jazz, European improvisation, rock and global beats co-exist in an ever-shifting skyscape of creativity. Through all their various collaborations, the vibes-bass-drums trio has remained the core of the Cloudmakers sound.

Now, fifteen years after their inception, the concept has come full circle with the inclusion of a new collaborator, the Grammy-winning Argentinian piano master Leo Genovese, already a veteran of the bands of Esperanza Spalding, Jack DeJohnette, and Wayne Shorter and whose horizon-spanning range of musical collaborators, including left-field rockers Mars Volta and Puerto Rican Hip Hop superstar Residente, feeds into his polyglot musicality that merges perfectly with the Cloudmakers. Jim and Leo met three years running at the Bezau Beatz festival in Austria: a mutual respect developed, a collaboration was proposed and Jim wrote a set of pieces for the quartet .“I formed Cloudmakers as a response to the ubiquitous piano trio – trying to give myself space. But I love the sound of piano and vibes, so when I met Leo it felt like it was finally time to close the loop. He plays at the highest level – he’s a very complete musician.”

The quartet went into the fabled Abbey Road Studio 3 to record with legendary engineer Sam Okell: A Drop Of Hope In The Ocean Of Uncertainty is the result, the utterly assured, compelling sound of a meeting of musical masters. The album title was carefully chosen “The overall message is that we live in a turbulent world, and we as artists can’t do much to change anything, but we can offer positive energy and hope – a drop in the ocean, but hopefully it has some value. Jim says: “Leo has this amazing freedom about the way he plays – a lot of the music is quite complex but we strive to be very free and create abstract textures within things that are rhythmically complex and Leo is a master of that. He understood the music immediately.” In Leo’s own words “To play this music, you have to figure out whether to jump. And then you jump. And you realize that not only can you fly over the whole city, but also every door in the city is open to you.”

The three days in Abbey Road were all captured on camera by budding Italian director Pietro Pingatore with assistance from Emelie Victoria and Arturo Maciel Flécha. The result is that the entire album is available to watch here from beginning to end. The film features HD digital as well as analogue tape footage and has been beautifully edited together by Pietro. We hope you enjoy it. 

See the video below and for more info visit cloudmakerstrio-whirlwind.bandcamp.com