Where it started

Miró Henry Sobrer displayed an interest in music early in his childhood, when he began singing to himself as a means of meditation and self-soothing. He soon entered into children’s choir and band programs playing the bass and the trombone, his primary instrument. His passion for music grew and he quickly dedicated himself to studying and performing it whenever possible. 

At the end of his high school studies he was offered full scholarships to both the Jacobs School of Music for classical and jazz trombone, as well as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to study classical trombone performance. He enrolled at SFCM. While he learned immensely in San Francisco, he felt his heart yearn to study the more diverse music of his upbringing: Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson, and Buena Vista Social Club were all regularly featured on the family stereo (his older siblings also introduced him to The Beatles and classic hip-hop groups like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest). At the end of his first year at SFCM, he received the unfortunate news that his father’s cancer had come back from remission. His father Josep Miquel (Pep) Sobrer made the dignified, brave decision to give up his fight with cancer and to end his suffering. Miró took a leave of absence from school and returned home to be with his beloved father. During Pep’s final days, he would constantly remind Miró: “follow your passion”.  As his soul’s flame flickered, Miró would reflect on those words. He realized that I had not found his passion at SFCM, and that he had to change course. He transferred to the IU Jacobs School of Music to study jazz trombone with Wayne Wallace. 

Miró’s cravings for the diverse music of his childhood were satiated at IU. There he learned about Indian Classical Music from the legendary sarod player Amjad Ali Khan; deepened his appreciation for rock, soul, funk, and hip-hop in Wallace’s contemporary jazz and soul class, and developed an immense interest in latin music through joining Wallace’s Latin Jazz Ensemble (LJE); as well as Afro-Cuban ensembles led by Wallace and Michael Spiro. Miró also developed an immense interest for writing and arranging under Wallace’s mentorship, and eventually had his arrangements performed by the LJE. Miró has also performed alongside notable jazz artists including Jeff Hamilton, Tamir Hendelman, Michael Rodriguez, Walter Smith III, Rachel Caswell, Wayne Wallace, Michael Spiro, John Raymond and Murray Low. He recorded trombone on a track of Wayne Wallace’s and Michael Spiro’s GRAMMY nominated album Canto América, and on many tracks on Wallace’s most recent album, Rhythm of Invention. He also recorded parts on fellow students professional releases including on Liberation Music Collective’s 2017 release Rebel Portraiture (an avant-garde big-band album composed and led by Hannah Fiddler and Matthew Riggen), and on LA saxophonist/composer Tim Kreis’s 2019 R&B/Soul EP Are You Listening?

At school, Miró’s most valuable experiences were his private lessons with Wayne Wallace. Wallace’s instruction on improvisation, composition, and arranging, gave Miró’s self-expression a place to flourish. He helped Miró find the passion his father had urged him to seek. Out of his abundant gratitude for this, Miró created his first album of original music, Two of Swords, in loving memory of his father Josep Miquel Sobrer who passed away on New Year’s Day, 2014.

Josep Miquel was a writer, professor, and Catalan immigrant. All the music in Two of Swords is thematically connected to his 1994 book, “The Book of Oracles, or A Poet’s Tarot”. Part philosophy, part allegory, the book uses the tarot to explore all of life’s riddles, both academically and philosophically. The “Two of Swords” is a card in the deck. In his interpretation, The Two of Swords is about duality and balance. That said, the card can take on many meanings because the tarot is not dogmatic in interpretation. The cards are like a lens for an individual to view their own life from a fresh perspective. Because the album is a musical tarot card, its message takes on unique and personal connotations for each listener. Direct excerpts from the book (as well as text from a much older Catatan poet named Josep Janes) are woven through the music in the form of speaking voices. Miró Henry employs many different compositional techniques to stage their words, allowing ample space for the listener to meditate on them. The album’s musical styles alchemize jazz, latin, folkloric and classical music. Some notable examples include an unexpectedly twisted latin-jazz arrangement of a classical song-cycle by the famous Catalan composer Frederic Mompou, and a musical triptych which combines both Indian classical music and Sardana (a Catalan folk music) with latin-jazz cha-cha. The music apotheosizes diversity and unity — and when combined with beautiful spoken poetry, creates a musical journey that will hopefully captivate the listener’s most vivid imagination. 

Nowadays, you can catch Miró performing in and around Chicago, mostly with the salsa group, Projecto 7. You will also be able to hear Miró perform the music from his album “Two of Swords” in August of 2022. After releasing the album, Miró plans to take some time off, before re-starting his group, the Storytellers. The Storytellers was a project Miró started in the fall of 2021 in Bloomington IN before he moved to Chicago. The group focuses on performing Miró’s original music and lyrics, and also features Miró on lead vocals. The material for this group will eventually be compiled into Miró’s second album, which is yet to be named or announced.