Benjamín Vergara is a Chilean, Valdivia-based trumpeter, improviser, and educator who has recorded with Fred Frith, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Axel Dörner, Mazen Kerbaj, and local double bass hero Amanda Irarrázabal. His work focuses on improvised music, written contemporary music, free jazz and experimental music. Edén Carrasco is a fellow Chilean, Santiago-based alto sax player and improviser,  known for experimental projects like Ensamble Majamama, Akinetón Retard, and his duo with Vergara. He has recorded with like-minded experimental improvisers like Leonel Kaplan and Christoph Kurzmann.

Vergara and Carrasco’s duo album, Secuelas (Aftermath in Spanish), was recorded by Carrasco at La Makinita in Santiago in April 2025. The album concluded more than two decades of collaborative work in the context of experimental music, noise, minimalism, free jazz, and site-specific performances. The album is released in a limited edition of sixty bottle green cassettes plus a download option.

It offers four free improvised pieces that search for acoustic, resonant breath-like timbres of the trumpet and the alto sax, played with highly inventive, personal extended breathing and percussive techniques, as well as the duo’s immediate, profound dynamics. Both Vergara and Carrasco employ their instrument as metal tubes that produce streams of air that they can shape and mould into abstract, otherworldly yet often lyrical textures. The four pieces demonstrate how Vergara and Carrasco channel their austere, sound-oriented aesthetics into elusive but openly emotional melodies, camouflaged by intriguing noisy sounds. They call these cryptic dances a noisy kind of drone blues submerged with a subversive interpretation of cool jazz.

Eyal Hareuveni

Benjamín Vergara (trumpet), Edén Carrasco (alto saxophone)