| Jazz |
Café Madrid — Harald Walkate/ The New York Second
Sometimes I think I have an enviable profession, especially when a composer’s new album slips quietly into my morning, somewhere between the lingering aroma of freshly brewed Lavazza coffee and the first notes of music reaching my ears before the city fully wakes up. Headphones on, the outside world dissolves. The moment expands. And once again, music opens the door to a new place.
Harald Walkate’s Café Madrid belongs to that rare category of albums that feel immediately personal and quietly universal at the same time. It speaks as naturally to American listeners as it does to European ones, unfolding like an inspired travel journal, one in which form matters just as much as meaning. This is music that does not demand attention; it earns it, patiently, over time.
Structured like the eleven chapters of a novel, the album invites reflection on its very premise. Café Madrid may or may not exist as a physical location, and Spain feels almost incidental here. What matters is the idea of place, filtered through memory, imagination, and lived experience. Anyone who has traveled knows these moments: a street corner, a passing breeze, leaves carried by the wind, small, fleeting details that suddenly awaken another memory altogether. This album is built from precisely those impressions.
Performed by an acoustic quartet, the music occupies a space where contemporary jazz meets accessibility without ever sacrificing depth. Its complexity lies not in virtuosity for its own sake, but in time, intention, and perspective. The piano provides the album’s tonal backbone, while the vibraphone plays a more subversive role, guiding the listener from scene to scene like a discreet narrator. The pace is deliberate. There is no urgency here, only space. Space to listen, to reflect, to drift.
This is jazz as contemplation: melodic on the surface, intellectually rich beneath. Almost Zen in spirit, it moves against the fractured rhythms of modern urban life. Beyond the immediacy of melody, it engages the mind, summoning images that gradually accumulate and drift toward nostalgia. Café Madrid is less a sound than an atmosphere. One can’t help but wonder: if this café were located in a northern city, in the cold, what identity would it assume? What colors would remain? What silences would emerge?
The music of The New York Second fits comfortably within the broad category of contemporary jazz, yet it draws freely from soul, Latin traditions, and classical influences. Critics often reach for words like “poetic,” “atmospheric,” or “cinematic”, labels that are sometimes overused, but here feel justified. Writing music that maintains a coherent identity from beginning to end, without slipping into ease or repetition, is notoriously difficult. Café Madrid achieves a rare sense of completeness without ever feeling resolved. It opens doors without closing any, unfolding like a carefully scored chamber piece rather than a conventional jazz record.
The shadows of Erik Satie and Rachmaninoff linger throughout, not as direct references, but as distant companions. This is not merely a travel album, nor simply a romantic one. It is, above all, an album of cultures,plural, layered, and reflective of its composer’s inner geography.
That, ultimately, is what art does: it gathers what forms us from within and projects it outward in artistic form, whether through visual art, literature, or music. At moments, Café Madrid recalls the measured rhythm of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy: contemplative, literary, quietly immersive. Beneath its surface calm lies the work of musicians of exceptional caliber, artists whose lived experience allows them to construct a setting of remarkable richness and depth.
Perhaps it is time to pour another cup of coffee and listen again, letting the mind wander. And although this may be the fifth album by The New York Second, it stands above all as the work of a major contemporary composer. Café Madrid is not a destination. It is a state of mind. And its architect is Harald Walkate.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, January 22nd 2026
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Musicians :
Harald Walkate – piano,
Rob Waring – vibraphone
Max Sergeant – drums
Lorenzo Buffa – double bass
Track Listing :
One Sunday
As The Crow Flies
Algerian Boardwalk
Skylines
Cafe Madrid
West By Norwest Boulevard
The Laost Christmas
So Long
And Then it’s Gone
Now it’s Just You and Me
Grow your Quiet Fortune