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Jazz pianist and composer Adan Hagley will be hosting a listening party for his debut album, Insomnia, on September 15 at the Kaiso Blues Cafe on Wrightson Road. The event will serve as a teaser for the formal album launch, which will take place on October 13.

Hagley said the theme of Insomnia is based on a song he wrote in 2009, after he had been accepted at the Berklee School of Music. “It was a pretty difficult time for me, I was very nervous and stressed about going to a prestigious music school and migrating to a different country and all these concerns in my head. I was having trouble sleeping at night and one night I heard this melody and said I really needed to put this down, and I got up and actually started to play the ideas that I was hearing in my head. It was the only time that I ever had a song come to me fully composed in my head, pretty much just there. As the years went by and I started to develop my repertoire, I decided it was time to release an album. I was trying to find the right concept as a first album, you know, I want people to understand who I am as a person, as an artist, and I wanted something to reflect the past 10 years of my life, and where I’ve been. I’ve definitely been through somewhat of a transitional period, moving from here to the States, then moving back to Trinidad, then finding my space in the local music scene and finding myself, so it’s been a lot of discovery and a lot of sleepless nights with the music and with myself and my thoughts.”

The album is composed of seven songs, Snarkyish, Insomnia, Shadow Dance, Run Away, Gregory Street, Oleo, Cheers to Life. Hagley said the first five are original compositions and the last two are covers. He said the music can be described as jazz fusion. “A lot of the songs I do are very much jazz fusion, they fall under that umbrella because I draw influence from a lot of different musical styles, Latin, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, samba and of course our local music, you hear a lot of calypso influence but I spent a lot of time in the States as well, so I have some funk oriented stuff, pop music, groovy R&B type music. I draw influence from a wide variety of music, but it would still fall under the jazz umbrella because it’s improvisational and it’s instrumental, so I don’t have any vocalists in the band.”

The band which performed on the album is comprised of Dareem Chandler on drums, Rodney Alexander on bass, Miguel Charles on guitar, Daniel Ryan on tenor saxophone, Mikhail Salcedo on the tenor pan, and Sheena Richardson on percussion, with Tony Paul, who plays alto saxophone and also flute, Joshua Pasqual on trombone, and Randell Adams on trumpet, playing for a few tracks. At the show, Chandler, Alexander, Charles and Richardson will reprise their roles, Paul will play the saxophone and Natasha Joseph will play pan.

Hagley said the purpose of the listening party is to build some buzz around the project. “We wanted to have an event around the theme of insomnia, the things that keep you up at night, give people a little sneak peek of what I’ve been working on, and what to expect to hear on October 12 for the show. So I’m releasing two of the songs for the show and a sneak preview of the other tracks. We want to have some interaction with media and music enthusiasts to talk about the process of putting together an album in Trinidad, especially something non-mainstream like jazz, and showcase some video and artwork. I want people to come out and see what I’ve been working on for the past year and to connect with some of my followers. I want to meet and interact with them and get some feedback, because feedback is always important, sometimes you’re so close to working on a project that you sometimes can’t put things into perspective. I can be very hard on myself sometimes and be a perfectionist, so I want people to come, give feedback and have a fun lime, listen to some jazz and enjoy yourself, it’s going to be a nice social night.”