(Picture by Cecília Coca)
Joan Casares grows up in a musical family, from where he gets his main inspiration and guides. He keeps playing self-taught for some years until when he starts receiving lessons from the master drummer Aldo Caviglia, who prepares him to do his Bachelor at Esmuc. There he receives lessons from the great drummers Jo Krause and David Xirgu. After graduating, he does a short stay in New York, where he attends to lessons with the legendary drummer Kenny Washington. Later on he gets accepted to do his Masters in the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam with drummer Martijn Vink and therefore goes to Temple University, Philadelphia, studying from the great drummer Rodney Green. During these periods he has had the opportunity to play with worldwide renamed musicians like Vincent Herring, Logan Richardson, Dick Oatts or Peter Bernstein.
He leads alongside the trumpet player Oriol Vallès the band “Smack Dab” which has already published 4 albums of 100% original music. The last one is “555“, an EP dedicated to the 5th anniversary of the band. Previously they recorded “Live at Jamboree vol. 9” (La Cúpula, 2018), “Smack 7 Dab (Feat. Perico Sambeat i Toni Belenguer)“ (Fresh Sound, 2016) and “Oriol Vallès i Joan Casares Presenten Smack Dab (Feat. Jesse Davis)” (Discmedi, 2015).
Besides Smack Dab he also is in front of the band TRO, with Pere Miró and Xavi Castillo, who have released two albums (“S’apropa Tempesta“, Fresh Sound Swing Alley 2019; and “TRO“, Aladid Records 2017).
Recently he has toured over Europe for the presentation of the albums “Iaspis” (The Changes, 2019) and “The Bop Collective” (Discmedi, 2018) with the band of the same name, lead by the saxophonist Irene Reig. They won the audience prize of the “Dutch Jazz Competition 2018“.
Besides from all those projects he is also co-leading a project with the saxophone player Lluc Casares, the Casares Brothers. This band has been playing for more than 10 years, and won the 2nd price in the “Keep An Eye International Competition 2017” competing besides bands from New York, Los Angeles, Berlin or London.
Out of the field of music interpretation, Joan is the founder of the record label The Changes, born on 2019, but with a handful of publications already released. Some of them have received awards from the music magazine Enderrock and have received funds from SGAE from their program of grants to music publishing.
Joan Casares 