Contemporary jazz returns to its roots through memory, ancestral sounds, and Neapolitan tradition. The new album is set for release in January 2027 on Filibusta Records, with the support of Nuovo IMAIE – Nuove Produzioni Discografiche. With Before We Were, Federico Milone returns with his ensemble for a new chapter in his musical research: a journey through sound, memory, and identity, where contemporary jazz meets the ancestral sounds of Southern Italian tradition. Following Deux Moi, his previous album released by Filibusta Records and included by Jazzit among the 100 best jazz albums of 2024, Milone continues his artistic journey with completely new music. The title Before We Were encapsulates the album’s central concept: what exists before memory, before experience can even become conscious recollection. It is the first sound preserved in Milone’s memory, or perhaps something even deeper: an ancestral trace that precedes the individual narrative and reconnects with one’s origins. «Before We Were is the origin of everything, the first sound I carry in my memory.» From this intuition comes a music that does not look nostalgically at the past, but reinterprets it through a contemporary sensibility. At the heart of the project are the melodies and rhythms from Southern Italian culture, which dialogue with the alto and soprano saxophones, Akai EWI, piano and Rhodes, double bass, and drums. The result is a musical language balanced between rhythm, improvisation, and composition, in which driving grooves and essential melodies create a sonic canvas where seemingly distant elements meet and transform one another. A journey back to the roots, to rediscover the sound that comes before memory.
Federico Milone // Before We Were - New Album Release
Location: Rue des Pierres, 50, 1000 Brussels
