| Contemporary music |
Guy Salamon – For Voices and Strings – Live at Paradox: A Joyful, Daring and Deeply Musical Adventure
For Voices and Strings – Live at Paradox, the new album by Amsterdam-based drummer and composer Guy Salamon, is a live recording of rare freshness and quality, in which voices, strings and jazz instruments talk, laugh, sing and surprise each other for the whole length of the concert.
Born in 1989 into a very musical family, Guy Salamon grew up between worlds: his mother, a classical singer from England, raised him on Baroque madrigals and chamber music, his father, a salsa-rock singer from Peru, filled the house with Latin American rhythms, and his Hungarian grandmother sang him Eastern European folk songs before bed. After studying in New York and at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, he settled in the Netherlands and made a name for himself with the Guy Salamon Group, an octet whose records Unfollow the Leader (2019), Creatures! Creatures! (2022, chosen by the newspaper NRC among the best Dutch albums of the year) and Free Hugs (2024) have shown a very personal, humorous and melancholy view of jazz.
For this new project, Guy took a deliberate step aside. Paradox Jazz Club in Tilburg gave him a commission to write something new, and he decided to combine his contemporary jazz language with his love of choral, chamber and folk music. Instead of his usual band, he assembled a completely new ensemble of singers and string players, and the album is, as he says, a tribute to everything he grew up with, and more.
The line-up is as original as the idea. Sanem Kalfa plays cello and sings, Yanna Pelser plays viola and sings, André Felipe Lima plays violin and sings, and Jim van der Zee sings and plays guitar, banjo and piano. Jesse Schilderink adds the deep colours of the baritone saxophone, Omer Govreen holds everything together on double bass, and Guy Salamon himself plays drums, piano and percussion. The strings don’t just accompany, they sing, and the voices behave like instruments, so that roles keep changing and the texture is never the same for long.
The album starts in a most surprising way. The first piece, “A Ballad for the Chronically Dehydrated” (the humour begins with the titles), opens with many voices singing alone, without any instruments, and only then do the instruments come in to enrich both the music and the singing. It is an original and confident start for a live record, and it tells you immediately that you are not going to hear a conventional jazz concert.
What follows confirms it. Pieces with titles like “Picky Eaters”, “Boci Boci Returns”, “Drama King”, “Shoo Bee Doo Bee Doo” and “Saruman/ Dopamine Shmopamine Blues” bring together folk melodies, chamber-music details, bluesy touches, a sense of the absurd and sudden bursts of energy, and the closing “Headache Reprise” completes the circle. It is music that can be tender and mischievous within the same minute, and that never takes itself too seriously, while taking its music very seriously indeed.
The beauty of this record does not lie in a few isolated moments, however remarkable they are, but in the constant quality of the musicians and of their playing. The listener is not placed in front of musical constructions to be admired from outside: you are invited to step inside them, to discover their perspectives and colours, and to be surprised by the relationships that form between the instruments and the voices. The album asks for attention, and in return it gives an immediate pleasure, the pleasure of a music whose beauty and warmth never depend on a spectacular effect. Each new listen reveals another detail, a discreet inflection, an articulation that changes how you hear the whole. It is also an illustration of what music can achieve when interpretation and individual invention become parts of one single ensemble. The pleasure does not rest on melodies designed to seduce you at once, but on the way the music is built, with astonishing intelligence and sensitivity.
Guy Salamon’s percussion and drum work contribute to the success of this album. Never overpowering, they are always present yet understated. Guy never limits himself to keeping time or underlining the rhythmic structure of his own compositions. He plays with remarkable ingenuity, giving momentum without creating tension and always opening a new perspective without breaking the balance of the ensemble. Drums and percussion talk with the other instruments and the voices rather than just supporting them, and this intelligence contributes greatly to the dazzling, sparkling quality of the album.
Everyone here takes part in a musical and sung conversation whose richness depends on mutual attention. It takes great talent to reach such freedom, and even more to make it all seem so natural. That is the quality that the best innovative groups manage to keep: a balance between the personality of each performer and the coherence of a shared vision. No one needs to impose themselves in order to exist fully, and everyone finds their place, and it is from this collective intelligence that a large part of the success of For Voices and Strings comes.
The title reminds me of the title of the great Strings & Voices Project of Ivo Perelman, and this album lives up to the same high standard. It is generous, inventive, funny and moving, recorded live in front of a packed room with a lovely sense of presence, and it deserves a large audience. A great album, which I love.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, October 27th, 2026
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Musicians:
Guy Salamon – drums, piano, percussion
Sanem Kalfa – voice, cello
Yanna Pelser – viola, voice
André Felipe Lima – violin, voice
Jim van der Zee – voice, guitar, banjo, piano
Jesse Schilderink – baritone saxophone
Omer Govreen – double bass
Tracklisting:
- A Ballad for the Chronically Dehydrated
- Picky Eaters
- Shoy’s Secret Song
- Boci Boci Returns
- Drama King
- Shoo Bee Doo Bee Doo
- Saruman / Dopamine Shmopamine Blues
- Headache Reprise
All music composed, arranged, and produced by Guy Salamon
Recorded live at Paradox Jazz Club, Tilburg, by Peter-Paul Van Hest
Mixed and mastered by Alessandro Mazzieri
Artwork and design by Travassos
Released by Loumi Records