Mike Casey presents Valencia

Mike Casey's Valencia album is a sonic exploration of styles and sounds that not only captivates the listener but also evokes emotions.

Photo by Mike Casey

With early singles supported by Jazz FM and BBC Radio 2 in the UK, and the album already garnering a glowing review from All About Jazz, 'Valencia' is the new long player by Los Angeles-based Mike Casey, a saxophone-focused recording artist, producer & composer who creates across many musical landscapes.

Originally forming his masters' thesis while studying at Berklee's selective Valencia Spain campus in 2019 for his graduate degree in Contemporary Performance & Music Production and premiered live at Spain’s national concert hall Auditori Nacional, "Valencia" - Mike's ninth release since 2017 overall - showcases him moving far beyond the polar opposite sax/bass/drums trio & electronic/hip hop formats that his stylistically varied output to date have largely oscillated between.

Instead, "Valencia" opts for an expansive, original, curious sonic view into the self-imposed challenge of mixing disparate influences from styles around the world compositionally without sacrificing the spontaneity or edge of jazz in the performance or sound - or Mike's own voice as an artist, composer, or improviser on the saxophone. The otherworldly, iconic architecture of The City of Arts & Sciences (as seen on Star Wars, Westworld) within which the songs were composed (and most of them recorded) was a massive influence in his composition process, as was the global nature of the program: 40 different countries were represented in the student body that year.

Calling this album simply "Jazz" would be limited: it's a forward-thinking, multi-genre, multicultural experience created by an artist who is trained in jazz but who fully absorbed a specific, inspiring environment and period of time abroad into his heart & soul, seeking to unify across geography & genre. Present on the album are moments of influences from rock (title track), gospel (piano solo on "The Beauty of Everyday Life"), specific Latin rhythms / harmonic devices (i.e. Peruvian Landó and Brazilian-esque harmony on "Universal Gratitude"), classical (time signature shifting of "Venus"), cinematic movie scores (Intro on "The Beauty of Everyday Life"), dancehall reggae ("Calle Pizarro"), phrasing concepts from India (i.e. couplet phrasing on "Ghazal") to name a few.

Simply put, at this point in Mike's young career, this record is his most ambitious, his magnum opus.

Mike Casey - Valencia
Release Date 23rd September 2024
Label Self-released

Tracklist
1. The Beauty of Everyday Life
2. Venus (Remastered)
3. Ghazal
4. Universal Gratitude
5. Calle Pizarro
6. Valencia
7. Universal Gratitude (Reprise)
8. The Beauty of Everyday Life (Radio Edit)