From the gong that resonates so grandly in the opening piece ‘One’ to the final jangling bells on the closer ‘To Know’, this auspicious debut from the young New York-based Cuban who has already played with Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane and Mark Turner, appears to be ceremony if not ritual. As Virelles explains in his sleeve notes, he is inspired by his homeland's folklore, particularly Afro-Cuban religious practices in which ‘complete systems’ comprise of music, poetry, storytelling and dance, which means that the sound of the piano and other instruments are only part of a bigger creative whole. With that in mind the key question is not so much what will the piano do but how will it be integrated into a sensory experience in which pause, silence, space, word, drama and imagined, implied dance have as much weight as sound? On many pieces, Virelles is orchestral and textural rather than obviously virtuosic and the absolute care with which he moves from full, bulky chords to needle sharp single notes is highly effective, above all for the precision, as if he were searching for one magical tone that translates the required emotion rather than a string of flashy motifs that will upholster a solo.

Apparently opposed forces in the jazz piano canon – Bill Evans and Jaki Byard, the svelte and the spiky – cohere seamlessly in the measured but incisive nature of Virelles' often icy, daringly elliptical but by no means bloodless phrases, which can sometimes be reduced to sole high pitches repeated over several measures. In addition to this understatement that is anything but underwhelming is the avoidance of expected ‘latin’ clichés. Andrew Cyrille plays deft, often rimshot-heavy percussion, which lends the arrangements momentum but the rhythms often stutter much more loosely than in son or salsa and the use of gongs to create sumptuous, fanfare-like blasts invokes the spirit of the Coltranes and Sanders in karma mode. In Roman Diaz, Virelles has a poet with a voice that matches that of Leon Thomas, one of Sanders' great collaborators, for gravitas and emotional depth. It is the relationship between the two men – the unforced synthesis of their tones and lines – that creates beauty. It highlights Virelles' ability to take the conceptual road less traveled. It bodes well for the future.