Juan Pablo Balcazar - Suite Resbalosa (2020)

Why does contemporary jazz find such a small audience, compared to modern and traditional jazz? I can only assume it is because our culture needs to fully embrace the aesthetic enjoyment of what is familiar, safe, before we risk stepping outside our comfort zone. New jazz is not safe by any means, but when it is good, it can transform the ways we think. And yet, most people involved in making money from music seem unable to see that. Fortunately, Juan Pablo Balcazar’s new Suite Resbalosa does not suffer from this lack of perspective. This album is not just easy entertainment, and that’s why I love it.

Balcazar is one of the pillars of the Barcelona jazz scene, and has proven himself not only to be a bass player of great imagination, taste and artistic integrity, but also a prolific and interesting composer. This time around his music exudes strength, skill and conviction, but also a feeling of understated melancholy that pervades the Suite. The accent is oftentimes heavy on the melodic, but this never detracts from its strength. Rather, it is a nod to the deep, groovy sound and climax of Reid Anderson’s “The Vastness of Space,” the album that inspired Balcazar’s own compositions here.

For his Suite Resbalosa, Balcazar assembled a good, tightly-knit unit that delivers intimate conversations between its five members throughout the set, following the somber but gentle groove —easily recognizable, easily assimilated— from the leader’s music. The group includes two alto saxophonists, Marcel·li Bayer and Joan Mas, pianist Antonio Mazzei from Venezuela, and drummer Oriol Roca. They achieve a kind of vital transcendence in each performance, sustaining, developing it with the strong, personal, emotionally gripping approach that is so forcibly on display in this session. The texture of each piece is warm and thick, and the moods are reflective and yearning. The ensembles are particularly striking, harmonious and rich in counterpoints, full of intriguing color changes and vigorous line movements.

Oriol Roca keeps up an exciting dialog with the soloists, and is especially clever with brushes on ballads, creating a compass of shifting accents and subtle textures.

Bayer and Mas are, for the most part, players from the Lee Konitz “Cool” school. The straight double alto sax, with only the rhythm section supporting it, turns out a most pleasant sound, light and airy, but at times loaded guts and passion, as is the case in Paul in Montreal. Their solos and dialogues are superbly put together with a remarkably disciplined control of the instrument. The empathy between the two horns is much in evidence in the frequent, spontaneous effusions of free-wheeling, diatonical blowing.

Antonio Mazzei is a strong yet sensitive soloist, with an invigorating sense of unpredictability, but also melodic in a highly personal way. Each track is an admirable vehicle for the pianist’s astounding blend of sheer emotion with technical virtuosity, all supported by a great deal of melodic substance.

This quintet traverses the ridges and troughs of the music with sensitive control, where each member’s skill as a soloist and improviser, the clarity and sheer musicality of their ideas, and the affinity with each other, create a cohesive ensemble sound which speaks for itself, growing through the moving eloquence of Juan Pablo Balcazar’s music and his work as a leader.

—Jordi Pujol