Like his Cuban compatriot David Virelles, Aruán Ortiz is a rising piano star with a sweeping contemporary technique – and the imagination and keyboard-power, fuelled by deep awareness of Cuba’s traditions, to be an enthralling one-man band too. On this solo set, Ortiz fuses hard-driving hooks, free jazz, harp-like effects, thudding drum sounds and lyrical reflections on dissonance and intervals, uniting all of it with a creativity of pacing that constantly grips the attention.
Insistent low-end piano vamps underpin strange limping dances, playful skips and metallic treble chord clangs (distantly reminiscent of early Abdullah Ibrahim) on the rapidly shifting L’Ouverture No 1. The 10-minute Cuban Cubanism is a tour de force of chord explosions, under-the-lid strumming, oddly rocking hooks and meteor showers of intense treble sound. Some pieces are jaunty and free jazzy at once. There are train-rhythm grooves fitfully assaulted by splintering-glass sounds that seem impossible to obtain from a piano, while the solemnly awestruck Coralaia shows just how much song sensibility the gifted Ortiz also possesses.
