Carta

Album review

David Virelles is a Cuban pianist who has been living in New York since around 2010. He was quick to reveal the elegance and modernity behind his syncretic style by establishing himself as the sideman of a stylistically varied range of musicians; such as the saxophonist Chris Potter (cf. The Dreamer Is The Dream and The Sirens), the Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko (December Avenue and Wisława), and even the great composer and saxophonist Henry Threadgill, a leading musician on the Chicago avant-garde scene (Double Up Plays Double Up Plus). As he works for himself on a series of hybrid and ambitious works, which revisit Afro-Caribbean music through the prism of the most modernist jazz (Mboko, in 2014, Antenna and Gnosis in 2016), he is today leading an orchestra made up of the double bassist Ben Street, and the drummer Eric McPherson. This record is quite clearly more traditional in its forms as well as in its unambiguous references to the history of jazz. However, it remains accomplished in an entirely personal fashion. In a repertoire composed almost entirely of original pieces (only the very beautiful Confidencial is a cover by Cuban musician Enrique Bonne Castillo), Virelles actualises a powerfully collective and organic trio, with all the intricate flavours particular to this classic formation. His piano is both fluid and abrupt, and rings out with virtuosity grounded on a principle of radical discontinuity, feeding music of an undeniable lyrical force, passing from sequences of a great rhythmic density to more abstract and contemplative tracks which open us up to a dreamlike state (Carta). © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz