For those unaware, following his father’s death, Miró Henry Sobrer found himself alone in a world full of political, environmental, and spiritual division.

Thus, his new album Two of Swords is dedicated to Miró’s Catalan father, Josep (Pep) Miquel Sobrer (1944-2014) whilst also being an homage to Miró’s heritage and a recollection of his grief.

His father, an accomplished writer, translator, and scholar of Spanish and Catalan literature, wrote his own tarot book in a poetic format. The album centers around Josep’s text version of the Two of Swords tarot card.

The album features plentiful spoken poetry: the prose-poem corresponding to this card from Josep’s tarot book, and some sonnets by another Catalan poet Josep Janés i Olivé, whose poems accompany Miró’s twisted-arrangement of a song cycle by the renowned Catalan composer Frederic Mompou.

Act One:
1. “Two of Swords” (Part One)
“Dream Combat” (“Combat del Somni”)
2. “Over You Only The Flowers
3. “Tonight Only One Wind”
4. “I Don’t Know If I’m Seeing You”
5. “I Had A Vision of You Being Like The Sea”
6. “Make My Life Transparent”

Act Two:
7. “Deep Waters” (“Aigües Profundes”)
8. “Trinity Dance” (Part One)
9. “Trinity Dance” (Part Two)
10. “Trinity Dance” (Part Three)
11. “Bridge Over The Tiber”
12. “Two of Swords” (Part Two)

This incredibly impassioned and immaculately heartfelt new album opens on Act One, where spoken words from part one of the “Two of Swords” entry in Josep’s book are dutifully accompanied by a muted trombone duet that foreshadows the melody from “Unity Suite part two,” which bleeds seamlessly into the short, but sweetly spoken words of the arrangement of Mompou’s song cycle “Dream Combat” (“Combat del Somni”).

As he himself has acknowledged, Miró’s arrangement contrasts starkly from the original due to his unique approach. For here he strips the original music of its flesh until all that remains is a skeleton which becomes a seed to nourish with a more modern approach. This regrows the piece and imbues it with fresh vitality.

The next track is the dulcet, yet magnificently gleaming combination of spoken word and bowed percussion within “Over You Only The Flowers” which is then followed by the exuberant vibrancy of “Tonight Only One Wind”, the aching yearn combined with the exasperation of perennial hope within “I Don’t Know If I’m Seeing You”, the simply magnificent, wholly encompassing work of musical art within the near nine minute “I Had A Vision of You Being Like The Sea”, and the veritably cinematic, melodically rhythmical, finger-snapping joys of “Make My Life Transparent”.

Act two opens on “Deep Waters” (“Aigües Profundes”), and introduces spoken words from the second half of the “Two of Swords” poem, superimposing them over a chorale, but then a violent rhythmic interjection leads into the main melody and groove.

After this we are brought forth another original in three parts entitled “Trinity Dance” (aka “Unity Suite”) which features progressively layered Indian Classical Music with Sardana (a Catalan folk music) and latin-jazz cha-cha-cha into a cacophonous harmony, that is at once chaotically discordant and peacefully unified.

Part One is a mediation in art form, a percussional yearn that both lingers yet ebbs throughout, and which is later layered with other instruments to raise it. Part Two is a flirtatious, hip swaying, if not regimented piece, whereas Part Three is a more loose, free flowing dance floor swirl.

An accordionist street musician inspired the final full-length track: a contrafact on the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves” titled “Bridge Over The Tiber”. With lilting, quick-shifting rhythms, resemblant of tango and buleria, this song symbolizes the historic flooding of the Tiber river that runs through Rome.

The album finishes by recalling its own inception, with the remaining text from the “Two of Swords” spoken over another muted trombone duet that trills and flutters away like a bird flying into the distance.

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