Cuban-American pianist David Virelles has been one of the most original figures in contemporary improvised music since debuting as a sideman with Jane Bunnett over 20 years ago and going on to work with such as Steve Coleman and Henry Threadgill.

The discography he has built in that time is marked by startlingly original approaches to Afro-Cuban folklore, and African-American and European classical music that reach beyond any standardised Latin-jazz.

This solo piano set, his first to date, will only enhance his reputation, above all because Virelles confirms his ability to create music that has a kind of futurism by way of ancestrality, often pitting fluent but tonally ambiguous lines against a playful blurring of evenness and oddness of meter, as if the pulse floats around as much as it pushes down. Virelles’ touch on the piano has both elegance and escarpment, but his use of the marimbula, a box with metal keys used in changui folk songs, brings a scratchy beauty to new pieces and reprises of songs by Cuban composers Mariano Merceron and Sindo Garay. Although Virelles plays unaccompanied on most of the material he is joined on three tracks by percussionist Julio Barreto, who simply brings out the strong underlying groove of his playing that often retains a real sense of ritual dance and ceremony, adding to the heights of structural sophistication that are scaled.

Challenging, deeply vibrant music.