The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and pianist/composer Shai Maestro. His new album, Solo: Miniatures & Tales, was released 2 May via naïve records. Links to stream the album and to Maestro’s website can be found at the end of this article.
“What I want to present is the human effort,” Shai Maestro explained of his transcendent last album, 2021’s Human, recorded with bassist Jorge Roeder, drummer Ofri Nehemheya, and trumpeter Philip Dizack. “It’s full of opportunities, contrasts, colours, energy and life and is, finally, impossible to explain.”
That was his last album with the hallowed ECM Records, and the pianist simply says it was “time to move on.” He calls his new label, naïve records, “animated and engaged … very invested in helping the music get out there.”
After a decade of trio and quartet work, Maestro’s first post-ECM offering, Solo: Miniatures and Tales, takes that humanness to a new level: it’s just one man, at his centuries-old instrument.
On his first-ever solo album, the Israel-born pianist is arguably at his most intimate, lyrical and melodic, boiling down his essence without compromising one bit of his vision. We spoke about letting accidents guide the music, the art of a good melody, and what he takes away from flamenco and rumba.
UK Jazz News: In your pianism and composing, what does the concept of refinement mean to you?
Shai Maestro: I guess it has to do with experience. When I was in an earlier stage of my career, I felt the need to play all the craziest shit constantly, to do all the sophisticated stuff. To be clear: I love that. I’m a nerd. I’m a mega-nerd.
Sometimes, being melodic was – I don’t know if it was frowned upon, exactly, but people are almost afraid to play melodies sometimes. Then, I realised that the people I loved most were amazing lyricists: Oscar Peterson, Keith [Jarrett], guys like that. Even Ornette, if you listen closely, was an amazing lyricist. You know what I mean?
The art of how to play good melodies is kind of an abstract thing to explain and explore. But with time, I feel I’ve started to learn how to play a good, simple melody in an honest way, which I was struggling to do before.
UKJN: In some artists’ minds, they could be playing the “craziest shit,” to borrow your phrase. But it might hit the listener’s ear as meandering or directionless, even when it really isn’t.
SM: Yeah, man. Playing a good melody – in my experience, at least – you need to have a very fast [internal] computer, digesting all the changes. Because sometimes, especially playing complex changes, you have to be really quick with finding the pivot points. The common notes between changes, chords that flow quickly.
It’s a matter of getting used to that high-speed thinking, and then playing something with ease.
UKJN: What inspired the ‘miniatures and tales’ concept? Do any well-known albums in the canon follow that framework?
SM: No, the record was kind of an accident. I didn’t mean to record a solo piano album. I played in a place in Utrecht [in the Netherlands] called ConcertLab. We recorded all day. And I was just like, Ah, let me just do this thing. I don’t know what we’re going to use it for. And then there was one in Berlin, [for a live jazz video platform] called Victor’s Places.
It wasn’t a [situation] where I wanted to dive into a concept. These things were recorded, and I noticed that many of them are short and to the point. ‘All the Things You Are’ is two minutes or something. Usually, when you play standards, it’s a longer exploration. So, it just happened. In retrospect, I was like, Oh, wow. This is nice. I would love to release it.
UKJN: Did you have an inkling to make a solo piano record at any other point in your career?
SM: One hundred percent, yes. And I knew that if I made the decision to try to release one, it would probably be very difficult, because I would start overthinking it and trying to make it a groundbreaking whatever, you know? And that usually hurts the music.
I realised that the less importance I gave [the proceedings], the more relaxed I could be, and the more I could just let myself play. At this point in my career, I have more trust in just playing than trying to do some preconceived, acrobatic thing.
UKJN: Would you say you and your friends and colleagues feel that pressure to be groundbreaking, in order to sell a record or offer a big narrative or something?
SM: I would say a lot of people do. There are a select few who just authentically document what they’re doing. But I guess if you book the date, go into the studio, pay the musicians, pay the studio, people tend to want the record to be good and to reach people. A lot of times, that gets in the way of the music, I feel, because there are too many expectations. You can put too much on it.
UKJN: Speaking of refinement, or finessing: did you record a lot of takes for each track? Or did you just kind of go with intuition?
SM: It’s mainly a one-take record. I think one of them had two takes, but the rest is just how it came out.
UKJN: Might that lead to self-criticism when listening to the final product? Not that there’s anything to necessarily criticise. As a musician myself, I just know I’d give some of my rawer recordings another go.
SM: It’s really interesting to observe it. Because if it’s something rough around the edges, but came out naturally, I tend to be OK with it. It’s authentic. It’s just: that’s what happened. But if you work on a produced record, every single second matters. That’s when you start overthinking, and a lot of times, you suck the life out of an album.
UKJN: The charm. The “hidden intention,” as Brian Eno put it.
SM: Exactly. I enjoy hearing a Coltrane record where Elvin dropped a stick, or the bass player is wrong somewhere. There are those moments where you can relate to it, unless it’s a complete fucking disaster – and then you’re like, Well, I can’t release that.
Otherwise, it’s fine. We live in a Photoshop, AI world where all the bodies are perfect, and all music is quantised. It’s kind of like, Give me something real!
UKJN: Without naming names, I’m curious as to whether you look out into the jazz landscape and see a sense of overthinking, or dialling things in too much. Especially with high-production, high-concept releases.
SM: Absolutely. Someone wrote an email to me lately about how much they love my music. They talked to ChatGPT, and it spit out an answer dissecting why they love my music. And they sent that to me, which I guess is accurate to what they feel.
But I’m like, Yo, I’d rather hear something raw from you. Whether it be bad grammar, or not being able to explain yourself. To write that, rather than sending me ChatGPT. It’s kind of analogous to how music could sound: over-polished and humanless, in a way.
I’m working on a big, polished record, and now I’m at the stage of trying to mess it up a little bit. Recording live with not many takes, getting a live aspect of it, then throwing the production stuff into the garbage. It has tons of guests, and it’s really exciting. It will probably come out next year.
UKJN: What are you listening to and/or getting inspired by lately?
SM: The new Bon Iver [2025’s SABLE, fABLE] is really great. I also heard a choir singing Arvo Pärt [here] in Barcelona, which was one of the most gorgeous things I ever heard. Flamenco and Cuban music always rotate in my playlist. Timba music. The occasional Shostakovich [chuckles] slash Beyoncé.
UKJN: Give me a flamenco record to check out.
SM: [Romani flamenco guitarist] Diego del Morao is unbelievable. He has an old record [from 2010] called Orate. And then he has a [2020] record with [Spanish Romani flamenco singer] Israel Fernández called Amor, which is just as good. And then, anything that Paco de Lucia and [fellow flamenco guitarist] Camarón de la Isla did – just check that out, because it’s golden.
UKJN: What do you take away from flamenco and Cuban music and integrate into your own work?
SM: I would say rhythm and authenticity. Both are huge, significant parts of my musical DNA, whether I’m playing straight-ahead jazz, or a ballad, or anything. The way that the quinto drum phrases in Cuban rumba really influenced my phrasing.
In flamenco, there’s a sense of harmonic anticipation. The chord can come half a bar before the downbeat and give a crazy pulling feeling. Or, a lot of times, they’ll do it after, which is really interesting to me. You resolve after the downbeat, so there’s the sensation that you arrived home, but you’re still on the dominant. Half a bar later, boom – the resolution comes.
That’s just one [aspect], but the singing, the authenticity, the rubato versus grid stuff that they have in flamenco and Cuban music is unbelievable. They have the palmeros – the guys who clap – and then the flamenco singer will sing almost rubato on top of it.
A good example in the jazz world would be [drummer] Marcus Gilmore — someone who holds both the grid and the loose part, and can play that at the same time. Like, three limbs will do one thing, and then one limb will do something completely free on top of it. That’s the bread and butter of flamenco.
