Arturo O'Farrill: Dreaming In Lions
Author: John Fordham
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Vince Cherico (perc) |
Label: |
Blue Note Records |
Magazine Review Date: |
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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