At Vortex Jazz Club in London: Being Human - Minar of Dreams (Album Launch)

Pan-European contemporary jazz quartet Being Human are a band built across borders. Bringing together acclaimed Lithuanian guitarist Mindaugas Stumbras, Mercury Prize-nominated Scottish pianist Fergus McCreadie, and a celebrated Tuscan rhythm section complete with Michelangelo Scandroglio (LVDF) and Mattia Galeotti, the group are united by a musical language that reaches beyond geography – folding the folk traditions of their respective homes into lyrical contemporary jazz, vivid melodic storytelling and free-flowing improvisation.

Nine years in the making, their story is rooted first and foremost in friendship. Scandroglio, Galeotti and Stumbras first crossed paths at the Siena Jazz Summer Workshop in Italy, before Stumbras invited fellow Royal Conservatoire of Scotland student McCreadie into the fold. A formative Italian tour followed, setting in motion an unlikely musical relationship between four musicians living across four different countries. Through the logistical challenges of distance and the disruption of the pandemic, that connection has endured, developing across years of touring into a distinctive collective voice.

Releasing on Friday 6th November via Bridge The Gap, the group’s new album ‘Minar of Dreams’ is the clearest articulation of that voice yet. Following their self-titled 2021 debut, the quartet began to question what truly defined Being Human: what should this combination of four distinct musical backgrounds sound like when distilled into one? During a drive through the Scottish Highlands, they set themselves a challenge – to compose a new body of original music that drew instinctively from their individual cultural traditions, while placing the collective ahead of any one voice. The result is colourful, intense and dreamlike: folk-rooted melodies drift through restless harmonic movement, and moments of uninhibited improvisation.