The Brazilian jazz pianist Amaro Freitas has previously released three trio albums that melded rhythms including baião, frevo and other traditional stylings of his Pernambuco roots with the aesthetics of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, with whom he shares a percussive muscularity.

Freitas’ 2021’s Sankofa dived into the stories of black Brazil (his left hand is Africa, he’s said, and his right hand is Europe); his new solo album Y’Y (tha’s eey-eh eey-eh, the word for ‘water’ or ‘river’ in the dialect of the Sateré Mawé people of Amazonas) is a journey into the heart of the Amazon basin. Where, as artists from Brazilian guitarist and pianist Egberto Gismonti and percussionist Nana Vasconcelos (check their 1976 ECM classic Dança das Cabeças) to lauded Australian performer and field recordist Vicki Hallet (who has just released the fabulous Live At The Amazon) continue to demonstrate, there is sublime music to be found in the quietest place on earth.

The first half of Freitas’s audio-excursion is a leaf-rustling, wind-whistling, bird-calling adventure at once soothing and invigorating. inside his prepared piano are seeds, clothes, dominos and bits of wood - or if you like, sunsets and rivers, rainforests and thunderstorms, jungle spirits and ancestral knowledge. Opener 'Mapinguari' finds piano passages rolling over cymbals and shakers; the oh-so-atmospheric 'Gloriosa' features fluttering whistles and from Brandee Younger, gorgeous washes of harp. The title track, a duo representing opposing water flows, features Shabaka Hutchings on flute and echo-laden chants. 'Mar de Cirandeiras', a tribute to the circle dances of Freitas’ youth, has its unconventional harmonies delivered on Fender Rhodes and acoustic piano, with Jeff Parker on lovely, ethereal guitar. An important work, imaginatively, beautifully rendered.