Ignacio Pintó (INNEC): “Our sonic world is the product of an intense group process”
They met at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam: the members of INNEC, a quartet that has been exploring the boundaries between jazz, free improvisation and new music for the past two years. During Dag in de Branding, the foursome will perform a set on the staircase of Amare, featuring material from Elements and Derivations, their debut album released last February on Honolulu Records. Without regular vibraphonist Aleksander Sever, but with their good friend Justin Zitt on piano, as double bassist and bandleader Ignacio Pintó explains in a video call: “Unfortunately Aleksander has commitments in Italy, but Justin is a fantastic pianist who knows our music very well. I’m fully confident it will work out.”
INNEC — is it an acronym?
“That’s right. Our name refers to the painter Wassily Kandinsky. A few months before we started the band, I came across his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which inspired me enormously. The whole book radiates a visionary energy: a utopian view of what art can be, of the power of the unheard, the new. Somewhere Kandinsky writes about the idea of an ‘inner necessity’. That term captured exactly what I felt when we began playing together. Hence: INNEC.”
You’ve only been together for two years. And already a debut album…
“In fact, we’ve been playing together a bit longer — since the summer of 2023, if I’m not mistaken. But yes: the spring of 2024 was a decisive period. With support from the Amarte Fund, we were able to fully focus on the quartet during a residency. That’s where the first seed was planted for how we sound today.”
How would you describe your current sound?
“We feel most at home at the intersection of jazz and new music. On one hand, that translates into a love for layered rhythms and precise timing. On the other, we’re all deeply fascinated by the possibilities of sound as an acoustic phenomenon. Experimental jazz musicians like Christian Lillinger, Robert Landfermann and Elias Stemeseder are major sources of inspiration for us. But we also draw from modern avant‑garde composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen and Anton Webern. Not because they’re canonical names, but because we genuinely connect with their search for new sonic worlds. When we first heard that music, we immediately knew: we have to do something with this.”
The examples you mention come from both composed and improvised music. How do you bring those two worlds together?
“That was truly a group process. Look, I’ve played in many different jazz bands, and the working method is often that you improvise together, but based on a chord progression or a lead sheet. With INNEC we work differently. On paper I’m the bandleader and I bring most of the initial compositional ideas, but ultimately everything we play is the product of a collective mindset. Everyone contributes. We really developed our language together: by playing a lot, rehearsing, and discussing, we created a working method centered on relationality, interaction and reciprocity.”
How did that collective approach translate into your debut album Elements and Derivations?
“Our starting point was: if we make an album, we want to use the format in a way that contributes to our musical process. To return to your question about composition and improvisation: the relationship between the two actually became the conceptual foundation. Each piece appears twice on the album, as an ‘element’ and as a ‘derivation’. The Elements are essentially compositions. They do contain improvisation — we’re jazz musicians after all — but the basis is written material. The Derivations are collectively improvised variations on that same material.”