David Virelles

David Virelles is a Cuban pianist and composer, born in Cuba in 1983 and raised in Santiago de Cuba, who moved to Canada in 2001 and to New York in 2009. His music joins jazz improvisation and contemporary composition with the sacred and ritual music of Afro-Cuban traditions, as on his ECM albums Mbókò and Gnosis. Virelles went to Toronto at the invitation of Jane Bunnett and took private composition lessons with Henry Threadgill. Continuum (Pi Recordings, 2012) featured Ben Street, Andrew Cyrille and Román Díaz.