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Named “#1 Rising Star” in the Piano category in DownBeat Magazine’s Critics Poll in 2015, Cuban born pianist/ composer David Virelles grew up in a musical home. He started studying music at seven, as well as being exposed to the rich Cuban musical traditions.
The Brooklyn – based Virelles, who once became the first recipient of the Oscar Peterson award, has performed or recorded with Ravi Coltrane, Henry Threadgill, Román Díaz, Tomasz Stanko, Wadada Leo Smith, Jane Bunnett and The Spirits Of Havana, Dewey Redman, Sam Rivers, Steve Coleman, Andrew Cyrille, Hermeto Pascoal, José Luis Quintana “Changuito”, Stanley Cowell, Chucho Valdés, Paul Motian, Chris Potter, Mark Turner, Tom Harrell, Milford Graves, Alberto Lescay, among others.
Virelles’ album Continuum (on the New York label Pi Recordings) made several “Best Of The Year” lists in 2012, being selected #1 in The New York Times. His next album Mbòkó, released in 2014 on the Munich label ECM also ended up in virtually every “Best Of The Year” list, including The New York Times, NPR, ITunes, The Village Voice, DownBeat Magazine, among other sources.
About David Virelles’ Antenna:
DAVID VIRELLES With his most recent album, “Mbòkó,” Mr. Virelles delivered one of the most intoxicating jazz albums of 2014. His follow-up turns out to be not a full album but rather a five-track EP, “Antenna,” available only on vinyl and in digital form. The style of the music is electroacoustic, heavily reliant on samples and synths, and the personnel is serious, featuring brilliant peers like the drummer Marcus Gilmore alongside wise elders like the alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill and the vocalist Román Díaz. ECM
David Virelles: acoustic piano, Hammond B3 organ, Roland JUNO-6, Vermona electric piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, prepared piano, programming, samples; Alexander Overington: electronics, samples, cello; Henry Threadgill: alto saxophone; Román Díaz: vocals; Marcus Gilmore: drums, electronic percussion; Rafiq Bhatia: guitar; Etián Brebaje Man: vocals; Mauricio Herrera: percussion; Los Seres: a fictional percussion ensemble, created and programmed by David Virelles
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 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, Virelles’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 it as “a jazz-infused world-music project beyond categories,” adding: “Virelles looks set to make big differences in contemporary music for years to come.”