David Virelles

Friday, January 10, 2025

APPEARING: MANHATTAN MARATHON @ City Winery

Sunday, January 12, 2025

IMPRESSIONS: Improvisatory interpretations on “A Love Supreme” Featuring RAVI COLTRANE QUARTET and Guests @ Roulette

Pianist-composer David Virelles was born and raised in Santiago de Cuba, moving to Canada in 2001 and to New York City in 2009. His studies included private lessons in composition with composer-saxophonist-flutist Henry Threadgill. In 2014, ECM released Virelles’ leader debut for the label: Mbókò – Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá. As the subtitle indicates, the album’s 10 pieces feature his piano alongside a dual bass drone (by Thomas Morgan and Robert Hurst), the polyrhythmic percussion of a traditional trap set (Marcus Gilmore) and the all-important four-drum biankoméko kit (Román Díaz). With the sonic mysteries of Mbókò, Virelles transmuted the folkloric rhythms of Afro-Cuban religious ritual into a 21st-century musical impulse, tapping into a sound that’s simultaneously ancient and modern, communal and personal, meditative and propulsive.