Un Poeta

Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet (Un Poeta), winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes, is a darkly comic yet poignant fable of art, failure, and fragile mentorship set in Medellín. Shot on 16mm, its grainy textures and tonal shifts are mirrored in a score by Swedish composer Matti Bye and Trio Ramberget, whose acoustic palette of piano, trombone, bass clarinet, and double bass builds on the ambient and improvisational language of their 2024 collaboration Mirror Variations.

Rooted in ambient jazz and fourth world atmospheres, the music is at once cinematic and intimate, drifting between loose improvisation and subtle pulsing grooves—long tones, hushed harmonies, and resonant timbres that breathe with the rhythm of the story. Rather than dictating emotion, the score suspends it, amplifying absurdist edges while giving weight to moments of quiet humanity.

Yet the soundtrack also listens beautifully on its own, functioning less as accompaniment than as a parallel narrator. Fans of Jon Hassell’s fourth-world explorations or the atmospheric chamber-jazz lineage of Arve Henriksen and Karin Krog will recognize a similar sensitivity: music that creates space rather than filling it, where every note feels attuned to silence and resonance. Bye and Trio Ramberget’s interplay yields a soundworld at once fragile and expansive, slyly humorous yet deeply compassionate.

The result is a standalone album of contrasts: playful yet elegiac, absurd yet affectionate. Much like the film itself, the music embraces the messy, unpredictable, and ultimately moving experience of trying—and failing, and trying again—to lead an artistic life.

———————————————————————–

Matti Bye – piano
Pelle Westlin – bass clarinet
Johanna Ekholm – double bass
Gustav Davidsson – trombone

All compositions by Matti Bye & Trio Ramberget

Percussion on tracks # 6 & 12 by Dennis Egbert and Andreas Ekstedt Bådagård

Recorded at Studio Glasfågeln, Lilla Edet.
Mixed by  Gustav Davidsson
Master by Anders af Klintberg