Juan Romero is an Argentinian-Swedish, Stockholm-based percussionist and drummer who plays in Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra’s last album, Echoes (Rune Grammofon, 2023), and on Cosmic Ear’s debut album Traces (We Jazz, 2025). Now, after more than thirty years as a sideman, he releases his debut album as a bandleader with his Manuella Orkester, featuring German, Stockholm-based alto sax player Julia Strzalek, and Swedish pianist and keyboard player Alex Zethson (who also plays in the Fire! Orchestra’s Echoes), bassist Vilhelm Bromander, and drummer Pelle Vallgren (who has played with Romero in the OK Star Orchestra). Trumpeter Goran Kajfeš guests on one piece

Manuella Orkester’s Lua Armonia has one foot in jazz improvisation and the other in the folk and rhythmic traditions of the Caribbean and South America, with both feet dancing seductive and relaxed dances. This quintet offers an organic blend of warm, simple melodies, infectious and swinging yet rhythmically tight and disciplined grooves, and the immediate, liberating freedom of improvisation.

Manuella Orkester’s music forces the listener to involuntarily move their limbs and experiment with sensual dance moves, just like in traditional folk music, where rhythm was and still is a unifying force. But the best piece is «One of These Days», where Kajfeš’ poetic trumpet and Zethson’s atmospheric keyboards transform Manuella Orkester’s traditional rhythmic patterns and its unassuming style of improvisation into a cosmic, psychedelic, spiritual piece.

Eyal Hareuveni

Juan Romero (percussion), Julia Strzalek (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone), Alex Zethson (piano, keyboard), Vilhelm Bromander (electric bass, double bass), Pelle Vallgren (drums), Goran Kajfeš (trumpet)