For a relatively young musician nearing his 31st birthday in 2014, pianist David Virelles has managed to both garner a strong reputation and emerge with a singular voice in a relatively short period of time. While his early experiences in North America were within the confines of what might be expected from a Cuban expat, playing with Canadian saxophonist Jane Bunnett, whose career has been predicated on a decades-long fascination with the music of Virelles' native country, in recent years he's emerged as a much broader artist. The first recording to give notice was, perhaps, saxophonist/composer David Binney's wonderful 2011 Criss Cross date, Barefooted Town, but it was not long after that Virelles began to garner even more significant attention with his own 2012 recording Continuum (Pi), but even more so when he began appearing on ECM recordings, specifically saxophonist Chris Potter's 2012 label debut as a leader, The Sirens , and in label stalwart Tomasz Stanko's New York Quartet on the equally impressive Wislawa (2013).
Clearly, even at this relatively early stage in his career, Virelles has nothing to prove and so, with his own leader debut for ECM, Mbókò, he has fashioned a recording whose success is absolutely founded on the musical excellence of his chosen band mates, but which is nevertheless anything but a showcase for overt virtuosity and instrumental pyrotechnics. Instead, its subtitle says it all: Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and BIankoméko Abakuá, with the emphasis on Sacred Music. On this set of ten Virelles originals, the emphasis is more about evocation, whether it's the blockier angularity and energy of "Seven, Through the Divination Horn," where drummer Marcus Gilmore and biankoméko expert Roman Diaz create a polyrhythmic stew made denser still through the contributions of double bassists Thomas Morgan and Robert Hurst, or the lyrical beauty of the sparer "The Highest One" where, with ECM's characteristic attention to detail and sound, everyone's contributions are there to be heard with pristine clarity and absolute transparency.
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