David Virelles - Mboko (2014)

With 'Mbókò', Cuban pianist-composer David Virelles has taken the folkloric rhythms of Afro-Cuban religious ritual and transmuted them into a 21st-century music resonating with mystery and meaning.
The main title, 'Mbókò', can mean "fundament" or "sugar cane" or "The Voice," not the human voice but The Voice that is believed in Abakuá culture to be the voice of a spirit, or spirits. Sound is an element revered in this culture, and that idea - the worship of sound itself - was a shaping force in the performances of Virelles' compositions on 'Mbókò'.

The album's subtitle, 'Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá', indicates both the ritualistic intent of the ten pieces and their sound, with piano as lead voice alongside dual bass drone (played by Thomas Morgan and Robert Hurst) and the polyrhythmic percussion of a traditional trap set (Marcus Gilmore) and the all-important four-drum biankoméko kit, manned by Román Diaz. Virelles has tapped into a musical impulse that is simultaneously ancient and modern, communal and personal, meditative and propulsive. 'Mbókò' casts a spell.

David Virelles, born in 1983, was raised in Santiago de Cuba, moving to Canada in 2001 and to New York City in 2009. His studies included composition lessons with the great jazz composer-saxophonist-flutist Henry Threadgill. Virelles appeared as a sideman on two previous ECM albums: Tomasz Stanko's double-disc 'Wislawa' and Chris Potter's 'The Sirens', both released in 2013. The pianist's album 'Continuum' (Pi) was his initial exploration in the modernist refraction of Afro-Cuban ritual sounds; exotic and evocative, it wound up on many critical best-of-the-year lists in 2012.