For the press

“Pigri” is not your average jazz album. It’s a raw, minimalist collaboration between vocalist Emilia and drummer-composer Guillermo Martín-Viana. At its core, it’s a collection of beloved jazz standards, two intimate original pieces for solo drums, and a bold reinterpretation of Pigro, a 1970s protest song by Italian cantautore Ivan Graziani.

Recorded live in the studio without overdubs, re-takes, or elaborate arrangements, Pigri thrives on instinct and presence. The duo chose to abandon polished perfection in favor of emotional honesty, embracing the spontaneous imperfections that come with real-time performance. What you hear is what happened.

The title Pigri, Italian for "lazy ones", is both a nod to the Graziani song Pigro and a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the artists' decision to keep the project intentionally sparse. No other musicians, no full band, and only two original compositions. The result is a surprisingly rich, bold, and intimate album that invites listeners to rethink what it means to “do more with less.”

Pigro itself is as timely as ever. A sharp critique of passive mediocrity disguised as certainty, it’s a protest against complacency. That spirit runs through the album.

Emilia’s voice and Guillermo’s drums speak with clarity, wit, and subtle defiance. Pigri is their protest in softness, their challenge to convention.

The album is now available for review and streaming. We invite you to listen.

Notes

Emilia and Guillermo come from different corners of Europe, but their shared love for spontaneous music-making brought them together in a minimalist jazz dialogue that defies expectations.

Emilia was born in Cento, a small town near Bologna, into a home filled with classical music, vintage Italian records, and the constant rhythm of a singing family. Though she studied piano seriously and pursued classical training, her heart was always in the voice. After early performances with blues bands and years spent living and working in London and Berlin, singing in choirs and discovering live jazz in Berlin’s Kantstrasse, Emilia found her calling in jazz. Since 1992, she has performed with notable musicians in the Netherlands and Italy, while always staying rooted in her Italian musical heritage. Her 1998 album Canzoni e standards pays tribute to the golden age of Italian song and its timeless influence on her artistry.

Guillermo Martín-Viana (Sevilla, Spain, 1995) is a drummer, developer, and visual artist based in The Hague. His work explores the boundaries between sound, improvisation, and visual performance. From contemporary jazz stages in the Netherlands to experimental venues across Europe, Central America, and Asia, Guillermo has presented projects ranging from acoustic jazz to performative-improvisational-videogames. His most recent work involves building generative visual systems that invite audience interaction and real-time response. His album Songs of Rage and Impotence – 1LL0~ Remixes, released on Oigovisiones Label, blends raw emotion with technological artistry.

Together, they bring distinct but complementary energies, Emilia’s deep lyrical sensibility and vocal honesty, Guillermo’s rhythm-forward, boundary-pushing creativity. Their collaboration is a meeting of worlds: tradition and experimentation, voice and silence, Italy and Spain.