Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz caught the ears of UK jazz listeners with US sax star Greg Osby a few years back, and his growing reputation is confirmed by this New York recording of tautly percussive originals and a couple of Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk covers, on which Ortiz is partnered by bassist Eric Revis and one of jazz’s sharpest drummers, Gerald Cleaver. Ortiz belongs in the ballpark of time-bending piano experimenters such as Vijay Iyer, David Virelles and the late Paul Bley, but his group plays with one mind. Coleman’s Open and Close and The Sphinx tumultuously merge with percussive dynamism, there are almost pure-rhythm exercises of steady drum-hits and ticking repeat notes, abstract-improv snickerings. Monk’s Skippy hides in a swirl of collective free-playing, and Rafael Ortiz’s Uno, Dos y Tres, Que Paso is a meticulously slow-moving remake of a Cuban traditional classic. It’s bracing contemporary jazz, and the trio is due to visit the UK with it in April.
