Paul Bass Photos
Focus trio's Mathew Munzner and Israel Corona-Galan (above) and Brendan Castro (below) crammed into the WNHH FM studio.
Fourteen years after Israel Corona-Galan started building guitars, he’s building original floral-themed tunes for his jazz trio.
Corona-Galan played two of those improvisation-heavy instrumental originals with bandmates Brendan Castro (drums) and Matthew Munzner (bass) live on WNHH Thursday after they managed to squeeze their instruments and amps into the tinest “tiny desk” space on the FM dial.
One was called “Sharon.” He wrote it on a guitar that originated in South Korea, where he learned the rose of Sharon is the national flower. The other was entitled “Flower of May.”
In between numbers, they discussed their musical journeys. All three grew up with rock music. They gravitated toward jazz in high school, drawn to the subtleties and intricacies of the genre. “It’s a challenge; it tickles my brain,” Castro remarked.
Corona-Galen began playing at 5 years old. Growing up just outside Mexico City, he looked for an alternative to traveling an hour and a half to leave his guitar at a repair shop to get fixed. He turned to the web to learn to repair or put together his own guitar. He has kept learning since; he built the electric he played on WNHH from a neck and body from different Fenders along with other found parts.
The band’s members, whose ages range from 21 to 26, met as music students at Western Connecticut State University, and have been gigging as a trio for three years. They started with straight-ahead American songbook standards, incorporating more backbeat-driven, groove-based material over time. Their connection, their unspoken communication, was on display during the WNHH set as they anticipated each other’s moves and eased into solos. Despite their rock roots, they maintain a controlled volume and tempo within which to improvise.
Corona-Galan has begun incorporating the originals with the drum-guitar-bass set-up specifically in mind. You can hear the trio play the two original numbers plus a rendition of Wayne Shorter’s “Speak No Evil” on WNHH’s “Acoustic Thursday” program in the below video, followed by a clip from a recent performance at the Cannon on Dwight Street. (Follow band members on Instagram here and here.)
Previous “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” performances:
• Ceschi
• Wally
• Brandt Taylor & Chris DePino
• New Haven Kapelye
• Shellye Valauskas and Dean Falcone
• Brian Ember
• Sketch Tha Cataclysm
• MJ Bones
• Johnathan Moore
• Charlie Widmer
• Sam Carlson
• Steve Mednick
• Frank Critelli