Albert Cirera - Before the silence

2016 CD release.

Cirera Lisbon Trio teams him with the rhythm section of the Portuguese RED Trio - double bass player Hernâni Faustino, who also plays in the Staub Quartet and Clocks and Clouds quartet, and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini, known also from sax player Rodrigo Amado's Motion Trio and his collaborations with sax player Jon Irabagon and guitarist Thurston Moore, and fellow-Catalan pianist Agustí Fernández, a mentor of Cirera “who enlightened and opened with a hammer some minds” of Cirera generational fellows, and now hosts him in his own Liquid Trio. This quartet recorded its debut album live at the Catalan Voll Damm Festival Jazz Vic in May 2015.

The quartet flirts wisely between control, reserve and silence and eruptions of ecstatic, boundless power. The performance opens in a quiet, restrained mode yet a dense and restless one, but as Carlos Pérez Cruz writes in the liner notes “silence can catch fire”. This opening piece, “Before”, swings later on between fast and fiery improvisations and quieter, chaotic segments that still contain the accumulated tension of former segments, all highlight the colorful sense of detail and the intense, rhythmic drive.

The four musicians play as a four-headed organism that sound like it established long ago its independent logic and strong-minded, focused voice. “The” deepens the quartet's strength as an organic and experimental unit as all employ myriad of extended techniques, searching and sketching strange, beautifully nuanced ideas. Then Fernández and Cirera harness all into another series of ecstatic, dramatic attacks, in its turn, stress the always inventive pulse of Faustino and Ferrandini. “Silence” begins again with minimalist, quiet search for almost silent common ground, comprised of faraway, fragmented sounds, suggesting looser, abstract aspects of free improvisation, but eventually transform into another passionate, manic conclusion. The short encore, “Coda”, is a gentle, melodic piece that reflects peacefully on the the magnificent, fiery storm.

Eyal Hareuveni