Fabian Almazan - Rhizome (2014)

In February, the gifted Cuban pianist and composer Fabian Almazan, best know for his live and studio work as a member of the Terence Blanchard Quintet, released an album that represents the first cross–label collaboration between Blue Note Records and ArtistShare. It’s a beautiful work for jazz band and string quartet entitled Rhizome. The word comes from a passage by Carl Jung using a plant’s subterranean stem (its rhizome) as a metaphor for “something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.” Says Fabian Almazan: “We are all ‘shoots’ from the same rhizome. The song ‘Espejos’ (Spanish for ‘Mirrors’) talks of how we are all reflections of each other and how it’s such a tragedy that we continue to fight wars with each other and perform irra­tional acts of violence…The main message behind the project is one intended to unite people from all walks of life.”