David Virelles on The Jazz Standard with Brenda Sisane
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Santiago de Cuba is a city of percussion and procession, of voices and ceremony, of music carried through generations — sometimes written down, sometimes remembered in the body. And somewhere in that soundscape, a young David Virelles was listening. Listening to Cuban music, to Bach, to the elders and to the piano.
Later, his life would take him from Santiago to Toronto, and then to New York. Along the way, he would sit at the piano with some of the great improvisers of our time — from Andrew Cyrille, Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane to Chucho Valdés.
He calls his music traditional. His Igbó Alákorin — The Singer's Grove — reaches deep into the musical history of Santiago de Cuba. His solo work, NUNA, strips the piano back to something intimate and searching. And with ORO, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered at Zankel Hall, he expanded the conversation beyond the piano into a multidisciplinary world.
So perhaps the question is not simply where David Virelles' music comes from but rather: what does a tradition become when it is carried across borders, generations and oceans — and entrusted to an artist who refuses to leave it exactly where he found it?
Later, his life would take him from Santiago to Toronto, and then to New York. Along the way, he would sit at the piano with some of the great improvisers of our time — from Andrew Cyrille, Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane to Chucho Valdés.
He calls his music traditional. His Igbó Alákorin — The Singer's Grove — reaches deep into the musical history of Santiago de Cuba. His solo work, NUNA, strips the piano back to something intimate and searching. And with ORO, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered at Zankel Hall, he expanded the conversation beyond the piano into a multidisciplinary world.
So perhaps the question is not simply where David Virelles' music comes from but rather: what does a tradition become when it is carried across borders, generations and oceans — and entrusted to an artist who refuses to leave it exactly where he found it?
