Fabian Almazan Explores Environmental Change on Debut Album 'A World of Wounds'

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The album features voices and ideas from the climate movement across multiple single releases.

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Pianist and composer Fabian Almazan will release his first solo album, A World of Wounds, on his label Biophilia Records. The album further evolves Almazan's decade-long engagement with the issue of climate change, embodied by a series of releases and projects exploring the topic from a variety of perspectives, and by his environmentally-conscious label, Biophilia Records.

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Almazan has been hailed by PopMatters as 'one of the most astonishing pianists in creative music today' and by The New York Times for a style that 'rings of multiplicity [with] a supreme clarity of touch and a spirit of post-bop expedition.' On A World of Wounds, he dialogues directly with the voices of those on the front lines of the climate crisis, responding with what is described as some of the most profoundly emotional and sonically adventurous playing of his career to date.

At the outset of this body of climate-focused work, Almazan explains, 'I was focused on the damage that natural systems were experiencing due to human pollution and specifically sustainability. But as I have grown older, I have become a lot more intrigued by what leads people to stratify themselves from other human beings and the natural world on the topic of climate change. It feels like self inflicted-wounds that harm not just our neighbors but our children and our children's children.'

On his last album, 2019's acclaimed This Land Abounds With Life, Almazan reflected on a return visit to his native Cuba, tracing his path from the island of his birth to his adopted home in Harlem through their natural life and urban soundscapes. With A World of Wounds he charts a more interior journey, charting nearly a decade's worth of personal growth and change against the backdrop of the environmental struggle.

'Lots of things have happened in my personal life since my last album,' Almazan says. 'I have become a father, I began looking after my aging parents, I spent a year and a half living in Australia during the pandemic, and I am now on the fifth year of my doctorate at Harvard, learning from not only incredible musicians, but also from scientists and specialists outside of the world of music about climate change.'

The title A World of Wounds is taken from a phrase in the American naturalist Aldo Leopold's 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, a landmark, inspirational work for the conservation movement. 'Leopold is speaking about the human encroachment on the natural world and the negative effects it has on it,' Almazan says. 'For me, although there continues to be joy in the world, there are many wounds, not just ecological wounds. I feel a need to include certain sounds that fall outside the 'normal' range of the timbre of an acoustic piano. There are complex emotions that I feel can be reflected in the music when I include these sounds and sonic textures.'

The centerpiece of the album is the title track, an 18-minute free improvisation musing on the damage that humanity continues to inflict on the planet. The crystalline beauty of Almazan's piano, alternately tender and thunderous, becomes scarred and transfigured through the use of physical preparations and electronic processing over the piece's expansive course.

Through much of the remainder of the album, Almazan utilizes recordings of leaders in the environmental movement and fellow citizens affected by the convergence of climate change and political machinations, accompanying and responding to these voices and ideas in multiple ways. Several speakers were recorded by Almazan personally during the development of an interdisciplinary project in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

'A World More Concrete' features MacKenzie Marcelin, Climate Justice Director at Florida Rising, a grassroots organization dedicated to economic and racial justice in Florida. Almazan, who spent his teenage years in Miami, internalizes Marcelin's zeal and optimism, his accompaniment seeming to draw strength for the admittedly uphill battle ahead. The topic intersects with the book that gives the piece its name, historian N.D.B. Connolly's A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida.

'Doral' combines other employees of Florida Rising with residents of the city of Doral, offering a view of the real-world impact of climate change on the area's housing and economic situations. The album's closer, 'A Spiritual Refuge,' offers historical perspective from Samuel Tommie, a musician, artist and elder of the Seminole tribe of South Florida, with Almazan's underscoring evoking his roots in classical piano.

'Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah' takes as its leaping-off point the work of pianist Jason Moran and his approach to translating the natural rhythms and musicality of human speech onto the keyboard. Almazan edits an interview conducted by former Vice President Al Gore with Robert Bullard, the academic and activist known as the 'father of environmental justice,' emphasizing key moments through song-like repetition. 'Aside from it just being fun as a performer to take this approach,' the pianist says, 'I also hope that the repetition of Dr. Bullard's words somehow land in people's ears a little differently than if he were giving a lecture.'

The album's final two pieces again feature Almazan alone. 'Turn, Turn, Turn (To Everything There Is a Season)' adapts Pete Seeger 's classic rumination on the Book of Ecclesiastes and its depiction of a world in balance, tinged in Almazan's rendition with the world-weary awareness of that balance's perpetual elusiveness. 'Mea Culpa' turns the finger of blame on the composer himself, elegiac in the awareness of one's own responsibilities for the status quo.

In Almazan's words the piece, and in a sense the album as a whole, 'serves as an apology from one generation to the next, addressing a sense of profound regret for the environmental degradation left for future generations to manage. It invites listeners to recognize the melancholic situation of the climate crisis, acknowledge the harm we have caused, and work towards taking responsibility for our mistakes.'

Fri, Oct 9, 2026 — A World of Wounds

Fri, Oct 23, 2026 — Concrete

Fri, Nov 6, 2026 — Turn, Turn, Turn (To Everything There Is a Season)

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwmusic/article/Fabian-Almazan-to-Release-Debut-Album-A-WORLD-OF-WOUNDS-on-Biophilia-20260930)._