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Reviews

Gabriel Vicéns — Mural
(Bandcamp no#, 2024, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-03-11

Mural Cover art

Gabriel Vicéns’ previous album, The Way We Were Created, which we reviewed in these pages a few years back, was a fully composed energetic jazz deep-dive informed by the folk sounds of his native Puerto Rico, with Vicéns leading the band on guitar, with other players handling saxes, piano, bass, drums, and percussion. It was a superb album and it wouldn’t be outside the realm of expectations to figure that his next recording would again be exploring similar ground. Such is hardly the case, other than the fact that the music at hand is fully composed. It’s more like Vicéns is shining a spotlight on his compositional capabilities in places afar from where we last encountered him working. By contrast, there is no guitar on Mural, and as best as I can tell, Vicéns doesn’t play a single note on any instrument on any of the album’s seven instrumental tracks; his work here is strictly as the composer and producer of what could best be described as abstract neo-classical chamber music for small ensembles of various sizes and compositions. The opening title track is a twelve-minute piece for piano, violin, and clarinet that wanders through a number of different phases as it explores different ideas along the way. “Una Superficie Sin Rostro” is another very gentle — dare I say sleepy — piece composed for solo piano, full of emotion and expressive beauty. “Carnal” is another explorative piece that gently finds its way to conclusion using only piano and violin. Following a more eccentric path and certainly somewhat informed by Vicéns’ jazz background, the fourteen-plus minute “El Matorral” offers new surprises around every turn using an expanded ensemble of vibraphone, flute, clarinet, piano, violin, and cello, with silence being an essential component of the mix. “Ficción” features the Nu Quintet of oboe, bassoon, clarinet, French horn, and flute in an interesting and expansive piece like no other here. A conductor is only credited for one of the seven pieces, so I suppose that means that Vicéns conducted on the others. In all, Mural certainly isn’t what I initially expected, but it definitely shows an altogether different side of Vicéns’ compositional capabilities.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Gabriel Vicéns

More info
http://gabrielvicens.bandcamp.com/album/mural

 

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