João Lencastre’s Communion 3 - Movements in Freedom

Portuguese drummer and composer João Lencastre is back for a new opus of his project Communion, the one with which he used to dialogue with key musicians of the American and international jazz scenes like David Binney, Bill Carrothers, Thomas Morgan, Leo Genovese, Phil Grenadier, Benny Lackner and Jeremy Udden, among others.

This time, he chose the piano trio format, bringing back one of his more usual partners, pianist Jacob Sack, and a newcomer to his music, the Norwegian, but living in New York, double bassist Oivind Opsvik. The essence of the Communion concept keeps alive, but now only three of the pieces are compositions of the leader.

The rest are improvisations of the trio, some played freely and others minimally structured by the three musicians, from that choice coming the title “Movements in Freedom”. And because the purpose was to open the music, the CD starts with a song (“Street Woman”) written by one of the inventors of what we call free jazz, Ornette Coleman.

A new attitude is inscribed in this music, one of indifference regarding the boundaries once placed between the tradition of jazz and the avant-garde approach of this musical idiom, and this means that there’s no forbidden procedures all along the 10 reunited tracks. Melodies and grooving rhythms coexist with more abstract and exploratory incursions, without apologies of any kind, stating that jazz, now, is really, and finally, free.