Arturo O'Farrill: Dreaming In Lions

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Vince Cherico (perc)
Rodriguez Platiau (b)
Adam O’Farrill (t)
Carlos Maldonado (perc)
Victor Pablo Garcia Gaetan (perc)
Alison Deane (p)
Arturo O’Farrill (p)
Rafi Malkiel (tb, eu)
Zack O’Farrill (d)
Travis Reuter (g)
Alejandro Aviles (as, fl)

Label:

Blue Note Records

December/January/2021/2022

Media Format:

CD, LP, DL

Catalogue Number:

3840332

RecordDate:

Rec. date not stated

It feels like Arturo O'Farrill's Blue Note debut has been a long time coming - the Cuban-descended New York pianist, composer and bandleader's sophisticated fusion of urbane hard bop and audaciously advanced Latin jazz having seemed for years like a perfect fit for the iconic label's catalogue. With Dreaming In Lions (the title refers to the dancing-lions dreams of Santiago, Ernest Hemingway's Cuban fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea) O’Farrill strips down his famous Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra to a 10-piece, to play two suites originally composed for Cuba's Malpaso Dance Company.

The five-part 'Despedida', a suite themed on farewells, opens with O'Farrill's piano tolling a church-bell chime, before the intertwining brass lines of 'Del Mar' open up via his streaming piano solo into a riot of ensemble swing. Clamorously racing sax-led Latin funk erupts over clattering drums and an electric bass throb on 'Intruso', 'Beauty Cocoon' is a softly joyous flute and low-brass dance, while 'Ensayo Silencio' is a wah-wah-fuelled groover propelling some serpentine tenor sax and trumpet badinage.

The nine-movement 'Dreaming In Lions' suite embraces reflective jazz balladry, flat-out byzantine bebop over piano-anchored montuno vamps, knotty contemporary-classical rhythmic twists. The leader's Fender Rhodes figures glisten under ingeniously interlocked horn lines on 'The Deep', the dreamy 'I Wish I Was' features a poised and gleaming trumpet break from his son Adam O'Farrill. When O'Farrill Snr's pianist wife Alison Deane winds up the suite with the delicate solo-piano epilogue 'Dreams So Gold', Dreaming In Lions really does feel like the meeting point of a multitude of musical pathways, with hardly a hint of indulgence or excess in any of its 62 minutes.

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