Volta

Volta is an album conceived on the road. It is the very symbolical result of Gui’s year out performing around different countries in 2016. The project began to be conceived while he was performing as part of the artistic residency MOON – in the southern Sicilian island of Ortigia – where he developed most of the songs. Getting to London was no-where planned neither the recordings that were about to come by. Gui started by performing at jazz clubs and the people he met during those first weeks, lead to the invitation of recording during that same July/16, at the newly built Rosewood Studio in south London.
Those recordings became this privileged unimagined piece of group work. It is important to state that Volta was a team effort, and happened in the most wonderful way a musician can possibly imagine: having an open studio all for themselves, to freely create and experiment, day in, day out, all through the nights, calling up different players to drop by and try out new ideas together.
For that, it is thanks to the supporting musicians who performed in the recordings that the album was conceived. They were all great British names such as the talented young Ed Scull (producer of the album, responsible for the studio, the management of the whole team and one of the hands behind the arrangements; he is an excellent orchestral percussion player who has followed some symphonic Pink Floyd recordings, and also plays with Rick Wakeman and more); Howard Turner, tenor saxophone player (Chick Corea, Fela Kuti, Airto Moreira e Flora Purim) and so the list goes on. With enough time explore new dimensions on his music, Gui has achieved a unique soundscape on this work. The lyrics go from Portuguese to English and French, talking about the emotions of those who wander as the things that we leave behind when we depart, also those which we cannot depart from when we leave.
As Gui Hargreaves’ family came from England all the way back in mid-19th century, and he has lived in the South West of England to study when young, having this art work conceived in London was particularly important as a way to reconnect to his British roots.