David Virelles, Román Díaz, Nosotros Ensemble

CD version. Gnosis is the third ECM release by the Cuban pianist and composer David Virelles, raised in Santiago and based in New York. Eighteen short pieces move between solo piano, scored chamber music, ritual percussion and chant, and free passages. Virelles uses the title to mean an ancient collective reservoir of knowledge, and the album draws on the sacred, secular and ritual music of Cuba from the vantage point of contemporary improvisation.

At the centre are Virelles' piano and marímbula and the voice and percussion of Román Díaz, his longtime partner and a key figure in the transmission of Afro-Cuban musical history. Around them plays the Nosotros Ensemble, with flute, clarinets, viola, two cellos, the double bass of Thomas Morgan and four further percussionists, among them Adam Cruz on steel pan. Virelles calls this "several families functioning within one unit". The album was recorded at Avatar Studios in New York in May 2016 by James Farber and produced by Manfred Eicher. It follows Mbókò (2014) and the EP Antenna.

The opener, Del Tabaco y el Azúcar, layers a sharp piano chord, clave, marimba, plucked bass and ghostly steel pans before building to a crescendo. In Erume Kondó a trance-like percussion groove runs under a string drone while Díaz leads a call-and-response chant, with the piano entering as one more voice. Dos, one of the solo piano pieces, was arranged by Henry Threadgill, with whom Virelles studied composition. In Fitití Ñongo, just over two minutes long, an infectious montuno over pulsing drums gradually distorts while the piano runs dissonant lines over it. The solo piano piece De Ida y Vuelta I, classical in flavour, ends on a sharp phrase that leads into a brief, dramatic passage for strings.

In the New York Times, Giovanni Russonello found most of the tracks "brief and hypnotic", hints at what lies beneath rather than explanations. John Fordham of The Guardian called the record "a big, inclusive musical story, told in revealingly patient and personal narratives". Mike Collins of London Jazz News heard the piano as the connecting thread through all eighteen pieces.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2526, first released on 15 September 2017, with liner notes by Román Díaz in English and Spanish.