David Virelles: Nuna

Avant Jazz / Piano Jazz / Contemporary
premiera polska: 2024-03-22
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: USA
opakowanie: Gatefoldowe etui
opis:
JazzPRESS:
David Virelles w czasie pandemii był niezwykle aktywny na rynku wydawniczym. Brał m.in. udział w projekcie This is Now: Love in the Time of Covid, którym wytwórnia Pi Recordings starała się wspierać swoich artystów (nagrania tego cyklu ukazały się wyłącznie w formie cyfrowej w internecie). Najnowszy album, zatytułowany Nuna, jest z kolei solowym wydawnictwem pianisty, z małym wyjątkiem trzech utworów, w których nagraniu towarzyszył Virellesowi grający na instrumentach perkusyjnych Julio Barreto. Nuna składa się z aż dwudziestu kompozycji, przy czym cztery z nich dostępne są wyłącznie cyfrowo jako utwory dodatkowe.
Płyta pomyślana została jako hołd dla… fortepianu. Pokaz możliwości instrumentu, a także swoisty przegląd subiektywnie dobranych, bliskich wykonawcy stylów muzycznych. Większość nagrań jest autorstwa samego Virellesa, ale w programie płyty znalazły się także dwa dzieła kubańskich twórców – Mariano Merceróna i Sindo Garaya.
Całość rozpoczyna się w sposób dość przekorny, utworem Spacetime, w którym Virelles zagrał wyłącznie na marimbuli. Kolejne utwory sięgają w inspiracjach ku wspomnianej już muzyce z Kuby, klasyce, kompozycjom i instrumentalistom z Afryki. W dołączonym do płyty tekście Virelles wymienia nazwiska Aleksandra Scriabina, Fryderyka Chopina, a także pochodzącego z Algierii Mustaphy Skandraniego oraz Etiopczyka Emahoya Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Virelles kapitalnie połączył różne muzyczne światy. Część z nich przedstawił w formie rozbudowanej, kilku poświęcił zaledwie miniatury – A Tres Voces nie trwa nawet minuty. Całość tworzy fantastyczny recital. Urokliwe melodie przeplatają się z jazzową improwizacją. Doniosłość klasyki zderza się z tanecznymi rytmami Kuby.
Nuna – jak wspomniałem wcześniej – miała być formą adoracji fortepianu. Fantastyczne wykonanie sprawiło, że album stał się również demonstracją potencjału artysty. Virelles nie jest wprawdzie nowicjuszem, ale dzięki solowej płycie niewątpliwie umocnił swój wizerunek muzyka wybitnego, wartego szczególnej uwagi.
autor: Krzysztof Komorek

All About Jazz * * * *:
Cuban-born pianist/composer David Virelles has never been far from the top of the jazz profession in his recording career. His initial appearance as a sideman was with Juno Award winner Jane Bunnett on her 2001 Blue Note release Alma de Santiago. Early in his career he studied with Henry Threadgill and played with Steve Coleman, Chris Potter and Mark Turner. As a leader, he has primarily moved back and forth between the prestigious labels Pi Recordings and ECM for the past decade. Virelles has recorded with the late Tomasz Stańko, Ben Street, Andrew Cyrille, and Roman Diaz. As a leader, Virelles tends to work with mid-size ensembles but his new album Nuna is mostly a solo project.
As a pianist/composer, Virelles shares much with his countryman Aruán Ortiz. Both are classically trained pianists, natives of Santiago de Cuba who emigrated to New York. Though both have an affinity for progressive jazz and genre-blending, their sounds differ. In the semi-isolated setting of Nuna, Virelles brings a clandestine quality to his music. He opens the sixteen-track collection playing the marimbula on "Spacetime." The instrument is native to the Caribbean and in Cuba it is often used in changüí. It is essentially a giant version of the thumb piano keys mounted on a cajon-type box. The clipped bass notes set the unusual tone for the album.
Moods and styles vary throughout the set of compact compositions. "Cuando Canta El Cornetln" could be drifting out of a small Havana social club like a dance between Creole variegation and the Harlem Renaissance. Virelles is joined by multi-percussionist Julio Barreto, a colleague of Gonzalo Rubalcaba in the 1990s. A fellow Cuban artist, he appears in "Ghost Town," "Ignacio Villa," and "Portico," adding fluctuating energy to the latter two pieces.
Like a painter, Virelles gives us contrast and does so in liquid motions that carry our ears along seamlessly. His influences encompass the classics, great Cuban composers, and avant-garde experimentalism. The music on Nuna doesn't flag any particular inspiration nor does it try hard to impress. But impress it does.
By Karl Ackermann

DownBeat:
It’s impossible to sum up David Virelles’ music in one word, but if one were forced to do so, “limitless” is better than most. The Cuban-American keyboardist/composer’s recordings have combined Cuban and classical forms, hip-hop grooves and avant-garde dissonance, ceremonial chants and fluid jazz improvisation to express a musical concept that uses ancient roots to inform future dreams.
The recording at hand is Virelles’ response to the incontrovertible limits upon assembly imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. What, after all, is a piano player to do when they can’t convene a band or audience?
Play piano, of course. Aside from its first track, which is played on the marimbula (a large, bass-register variant on the thumb piano), Virelles plays only piano on Nuna. He plays it alone, save for some percussion supplied by Julio Barreto on three of the album’s 16 (20 on the accompanying download, if you purchase it from Bandcamp) tracks.
From the first phrases of “Ocho,” Virelles’ unwillingness to accept confinement is on display. The delicacy with which Virelles mutes notes on “Rezo” attests to his command of his instrument.
He gets everything he needs from his forthright touch on the keys, his moderating use of pedals and his encyclopedic stylistic reach. However, the injection of rhythmic intrigue that takes place each time Barreto appears suggests that while Virelles has a lot to say on the piano, he plays best with others.
By Bill Meyer

Editor's info:
Nuna is a book of compositions for solo piano by Cuban-American pianist and composer David Virelles. A 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Virelles has worked with musicians as distinct as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Tom Harrell and Milford Graves. His release Continuum (Pi 2012) was named the best jazz release of that year by The New York Times. After three esteemed releases on the ECM label, Virelles returned to Pi with Igbo Alakorin: The Singers Grove (2017), which was voted top Latin Jazz album in that year’s NPR Jazz Critics Poll.
Nuna is the consequence – as with so many others – of Virelles’s time in isolation during the Covid pandemic. His first project in that time was Transformación del Arcoiris, a captivating set of music for synthesizer, piano and sampler that was released in August, 2020 as part of Pi Recordings’ Bandcamp-only “This is Now: Love in the Time of Covid” series, which sought to help make up for some of the wages lost by musicians due to the pandemic. The New York Times called the release “Spellbinding…. Throughout, there is a feeling of lines evaporating — between musical performance and everyday life, between conceptualism and folklore, between togetherness and solitude.”
The seclusion naturally led to the completion of the present work for solo piano – some of which was premiered during a residency at the Spoleto Festival – which finds Virelles exploring the totality of his influences on the instrument, from improvisational contexts, Cuban traditional music, African keyboard traditions and European piano practices, all filtered through a modernist harmonic lens. Virelles cites as inspirations a wide range of pianists in the liner notes, from Frederic Chopin and Alexander Scriabin to the tributaries of African-diasporic music - both Black American and Cuban musicians, but also the Algerian pianist Mustapha Skandrani and Ethiopian Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Virelles describes Nuna as “a metaphor for the piano as an ancient instrument.” While the sonorities of the Steinway Model D concert grand piano are often on full display in his playing, he pays equal emphasis to tempering the instrument’s natural resonance, connecting it more to the sound of folkloric instruments such as thumb pianos, harps and drums. He achieves this purely through touch and pedaling, without any other mechanical manipulation or “prepping.” Indeed, the entire album is a demonstration of Virelles’s masterful control of shading, dynamics and timbre.
The set begins with “Spacetime,” a mysterious invocation played on the marímbula, a large, resonant wooden box with metal keys, that is used traditionally in changüí music. It is followed by a program of original compositions – with the exception of “Cuando Canta El Cornetín,” and “Germania" by Santiago de Cuba composers Mariano Mercerón and Sindo Garay, respectively. Virelles mostly plays solo, except on three tracks where he is joined by percussionist Julio Barreto, a long-standing member of Gonzalo Rubalcaba's group in the 1990s. Virelles describes each piece as “its own little cosmos focused on one musical approach or idea.” The range of inspirations includes Cuban atmospheres, New York experimentalism, post-romantic harmonics, improvisational swing and sonic textures. The playing is elegant, favoring clean lines that make clear the music’s rhythmic invention and contrapuntal weave. Each piece is a sparkling précis of their manifold influences, and they never resort to easy cultural or performative clichés. It’s all unmistakably the work of a singular probing intellect. As with each of Virelles’s projects, Nuna bridges the folkloric with the contemporary, while shrouded in an aura of mystery.

muzycy:
David Virelles, Steinway D piano, marímbula
Julio Barreto (3, 9, 14), cajón, guataca, conga, claves

utwory:
1. Spacetime 02:10
2. Ocho 04:06
3. Ghost Town 03:20
4. Rezo 03:27
5. A Tres Voces 00:44
6. Nacen 03:12
7. Al Compás De Mi Viejo Tres 04:22
8. Simple Answer 03:10
9. Ignacio Villa 05:03
10. Danza De Rosario 05:40
11. Mambo Escalonado 04:57
12. Tessellations 03:10
13. Cuando Canta El Cornetín 06:50
14. Pórtico 03:39
15. Germania 02:16
16. Casa 02:22

wydano: May 27, 2022
more info: www.pirecordings.com