David Virelles

David Virelles, Román Díaz & The Nosotros Ensemble – Gnosis (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 8, 2022 · Comments off

In “Gnosis”, the Santiago de Cuba-raised and New York-based pianist-composer David Virelles looks towards one melting pot from the vantage point of another. At one level an autobiographical album, a sequence of images conveyed through sound, Gnosis is a far- reaching work with deep roots. Transculturation and traditions are among the subjects under consideration, and the complex tapestry of Cuba’s music: the sacred, the secular, and the ritualistic. It’s an exciting, vivid and multi-faceted project of rapidly changing temperament, in which pulsating ensemble music and pristine, meditative solo piano both have their places. And it is enveloped in a feeling of mystery and magic that has made each of Virelles’s albums special.

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David Virelles – Antenna (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 8, 2022 · Comments off

The music of Cuban-born, Brooklyn-based pianist David Virelles conjures a hallucinatory world in which ancient Afro-Cuban rhythms and ritual reverberate in the here and now. His latest ECM offering is Antenna, music attuned to a timeless rhythmic-cultural current even as it pulses with a vibrantly urban, modernist energy. Antenna – a six-track, 22-minute EP to be released exclusively on vinyl and digitally – sees Virelles channel Afro-Cuban percussion into an electro-acoustic, almost psychedelic swirl, one that melds jazz improvisation and organic grooves with digital refraction, shadowy synthesizers, otherworldly field recordings and Cuban street poetry. Antenna is an undulating, throbbing, dizzying dream of sound. Mbòkó, the pianist’s ECM leader debut from 2014, featured in Best Of The Year lists in The New York Times, NPR, iTunes and The Village Voice, among others. The Guardian described Mbòkó as “a jazz-infused world-music project beyond categories,” adding: “Virelles looks set to make big differences in contemporary music for years to come.”

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Hilario Duran & David Virelles – Front Street Duets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 1, 2022 · Comments off

Internationally Acclaimed Cuban Jazz Pianists and Composers Hilario Duran and David Virelles Present a Collection of Virtuosic Collaborations on Front Street Duets.

Front Street Duets, set for release on ALMA Records on November 4 (October 14 in Canada), is a compelling collaboration of two internationally acclaimed Cuban jazz pianists and composers, Hilario Duran and David Virelles. This collection of piano duets features the virtuosic playing of two musicians in peak form. Duran and Virelles have a musical and personal relationship dating back over two decades, but this is their most extensive project to date.

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Chris Potter, David Virelles, Joe Martin, Marcus Gilmore – The Dreamer Is The Dream (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 18, 2022 · Comments off

For his third ECM release as a leader, Chris Potter presents a new acoustic quartet that naturally blends melodic rhapsody with rhythmic muscle. The group includes superlative musicians well known to followers of ECM’s many recordings from New York over the past decade: keyboardist David Virelles, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore, who each shine in addition to the leader on multiple horns. The Dreamer Is the Dream features Potter on tenor saxophone – the instrument that has made him one of the most admired players of his generation.

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David Virelles – Nuna (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 30, 2022 · Comments off

Nuna is a book of compositions for solo piano by Cuban-American pianist and composer David Virelles. A 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Virelles has worked with musicians as distinct as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Tom Harrell and Milford Graves. His release Continuum (Pi 2012) was named the best jazz release of that year by The New York Times. After three esteemed releases on the ECM label, Virelles returned to Pi with Igbo Alakorin: The Singers Grove (2017), which was voted top Latin Jazz album in that year’s NPR Jazz Critics Poll.

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