| Contemporary music |
Drum Poets: Iago Fernández and Jorge Rossy, two drummers in stereo and a quiet revolution.
Drum tracks and albums have a reputation, and it is mostly for “noise”. Drum Poets is the opposite: a quiet, searching, deeply musical record in which two of the most interesting drummers around sit in a room, with several instruments and not much of a plan, and simply listen to each other.
The idea goes back to 2006, when Jorge Rossy, famous for his years with the Brad Mehldau Trio, became one of Iago Fernández’s most important references and a great mentor. Years later, a freely improvised quartet session suggested a different kind of album, one made by letting go of control rather than by writing, arranging and practising structured music. So the two men met first as a duo, to let their imaginations run, listen patiently and create honestly and without pretension.
Iago and Jorge are two poets of the drum kit. Iago Fernández is a Galician-born drummer and composer, now based in Switzerland, who plays and composes as if he were writing poetry. He actually does write poems and paint, and the paintings on this record’s artwork are his. He has recorded more than 50 albums, six of them as a leader, with collaborators such as Mark Turner, Yumi Ito and Joris Roelofs, and has performed with Avishai Cohen, Lionel Loueke and Perico Sambeat. In an interview, he names Elvin Jones and Brian Blade as his biggest influences, and says his priorities as a drummer are sound, dynamics, blending and interaction. Those are exactly the qualities you hear here.
Jorge Rossy is one of the most influential drummers of his generation, with more than 180 recordings as a sideman, including work with Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman and Kurt Rosenwinkel, and tours with Charlie Haden and Wayne Shorter. For years he has also had a distinctive voice on vibraphone, marimba and piano, and his ECM debut as a vibes player, Puerta, came out in 2021.
On Drum Poets, each plays more than drums. Rossy adds marimba and vibraphone, and Iago adds piano and flugelhorn, which brings extra melodic and harmonic layers into the conversation. The dialogues remain balanced, shaped by attentive listening and by the space they give each other.
Iago and Jorge – Two drummers, two channels: First of all, we have to insist on the quality of the recording and on an idea that makes this album a real pleasure: the two drummers are separated into two channels. Iago Fernández is on the left and Jorge Rossy is on the right. In the same way that rock and progressive rock bands of the 1970s placed guitar on one channel and drums and bass on the other, this lets you hear what each man is doing and enjoy the dialogue between them as if you were sitting between the two speakers, or between the two drum kits.
The same logic is used for the double basses on the three sextet pieces: Paddy Fitzgerald on the left and Jonathan Collin-Bouhon on the right. It is a recording that rewards a good pair of speakers or headphones. For those of us who remember the intense joy of old records where the instruments of our favourite bands came out separately from each speaker, it brings back that feeling very vividly, and it hits you like a slap.
Iago and Jorge: Nineteen pieces in four parts. The album is built as a four-part programme of 19 tracks. Five short “double drums” pieces (First Drumming to Fifth Drumming) are spread through the record and are cleansing. They act as markers and palate-cleansers, the points where the two drummers meet alone. Four interludes (Care and Share, Complex Emotions, Always Compassionate and Vent to Heal) add a human, almost diaristic touch.
Four guests joined the duo for three specific pieces, recorded as a sextet: the two bassists, pianist Iannis Obiols, and alto saxophonist Sam Barnett. Barnett also recorded, mixed and mastered the whole album, and his saxophone appears on five tracks. These three pieces, “When Love Comes Your Way”, “Big Easy Blues” and “What a Wonderful World”, add different soundscapes and dynamics, but the music remains free, attentive and searching from beginning to end. “What a Wonderful World” deserves a special mention, a song written by Bob Thiele (under the name George Douglas) and George David Weiss, and first recorded by Louis Armstrong on August 1967. Here it is played very softly by the musicians, and above all by a fantastic Sam Barnett on alto saxophone. Its mood fits the rest of the album perfectly, tender and unhurried.
With this album, we are miles away from the drum solos you can hear in rock on tracks like “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (Ron Bushy, Iron Butterfly), “Toad” (Ginger Baker, Cream), “Moby Dick” (John Bonham, Led Zeppelin), or in jazz, on “The Drum Also Waltzes” (Max Roach), “Take Five” (Joe Morello, Dave Brubeck Quartet) or “Drum Thunder Suite” (Art Blakey, Jazz Messengers).
Here everything is offered with a restraint that gives the album incredible class. There are a few rare moments when the intensity of certain instruments is felt a little more, but most of the pieces invite meditation and reflection. The music is not at all about showing off the kit, it is about colour, resonance and space.
The percussion and drums of Iago Fernández and Jorge Rossy remind me of certain sequences on In the Court of the Crimson King, the famous debut of English progressive rock band King Crimson, released on October 1969, with Michael Giles on drums and Ian McDonald on vibraphone. Those sequences came back on Lizard (1970), this time with Andy McCulloch on drums, and then on Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (1973), with Bill Bruford on drums and Jamie Muir on percussion, drums and “allsorts”, the assorted found objects and sundry instruments he brought into the band.
Several tracks can without hesitation be filed under ‘ambient music’. For those of us who drifted away on the German prog’ rock and Krautrock bands of the 1960s and 1970s, Drum Poets belongs among the essentials. Like me, you will play it in a loop, then every day, just as we did with Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel or Guru Guru, led by its drum hero Mani Neumeier. The stereo separation of the two drummers is a gift to the listener, and in an area where noise, power and virtuosity are often the point, this album shows that elegance can be more powerful.
Saying more would be saying too much, because Drum Poets has to be discovered and listened to. It is a beautiful, generous and original record by two musicians who trust each other completely. A must!
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, November 13th, 2026
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Album on Loumi Records’ website
Musicians:
Iago Fernández – drums (left channel), piano, flugelhorn
Jorge Rossy – drums (right channel), marimba, vibraphone
Sam Barnett – alto saxophone on tracks 7, 9, 13, 17 & 18
Iannis Obiols – piano on tracks 7, 9 & 13
Paddy Fitzgerald – upright bass (left channel) on tracks 7, 9 & 13
Jonathan Collin-Bouhon – upright bass (right channel) on 7, 9 & 13
Tracklisting:
- First Drumming
- Vulnerable
- Vulnerable Coda
- Vulnerable Epilogue
- Second Drumming
- Prologue to When Love Comes
- When Love Comes Your Way
- Interlude I – Care and Share
- Big Easy Blues
- Interlude II – Complex Emotions
- Third Drumming
- Prelude to a Wonderful World
- What a Wonderful World
- Interlude III – Always Compassionate
- Fourth Drumming
- Interlude IV – Vent to Heal
- Ali
- Gaza’s Grief
- Fifth Drumming
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Sam Barnett
Artwork by Jay Vaz (paintings by Iago Fernández)