Gnosis

"This session, with strings, flute, vocals and four percussionists led by the Cuban drums guru Roman Diaz, sees Virelles deepening his exploration of the fission points between ancient African Cuban traditions and the music of his own era ... It's a big, inclusive musical story, told in revealingly patient and personal narratives".

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"Cuban-American pianist/composer David Virelles continues the exploration of Afro-Cuban musical traditions begun with his first recorded collaboration with vocalist/percussionist Roman Diaz on Continuum (Pi Recordings, 2012), continuing through Mbókò (ECM, 2013) and Antenna (ECM, 2016). He uses "gnosis" to refer to ancient collective knowledge, and this music is about the intersection of cultures - contemporary improvisational language and Cuban sources, especially the sacred Abakuá percussion ensemble ... There are over a dozen instrumentalists and vocalists employed, but they are mostly broken up into various small ensembles: the concert premiere was billed as "futuristic Afro-Cuban chamber music" ... Yet the entire program maintains a consistent tone, simultaneously ancient and contemporary: a ritual for the modern world".

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"It may not be an "easy" work to absorb initially, but with repeated listening, it become far less oblique; one need only use the episodic piano solos as guides. Virelles wrote Gnosis not as a statement but as a series of plausible yet labyrinthine questions. Its beauty lies in that fact that though his questions have purpose and direction, they are, by their very nature, unanswerable".

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