Tony Hall, Jazzwise UK
Awareness: 4 stars
Venezuela-born Luis Perdomo is, first and foremost, an incredible pianist. A former child prodigy, he’s now 35, has absorbed just about every conceivable kind of music and excels in every area. Be it Latin, South American, North American, European classical, straightahead jazz, avant garde… you name it. As he says “It’s all music”.
This second album is even more impressive than his debut Focus Point two years ago. It’s self-produced (with the assistance of two sympathetic Brooklyn engineers—Bobo Fini and Peter Karl) and the piano sound is just about perfect. There are two groups involved. The basic trio has Glawischnig (the Austrian, who deservedly seems to be the first-call bassist on most of these ground-breaking Latin sessions) and former McLean pupil McPherson, who is rapidly developing into a major talent. Their chemistry with Perdomo is quite remarkable in the way they anticipate where he’s taking the music, then adapt and develop their own thing.
Perdomo’s melodic and harmonic ideas (some, familiar-sounding; others, totally unexpected) are all tied in with his rhythmic conception, which varies from track to track. He is a truly masterful musician and his idea to use a double trio on five tracks—which could have been a disaster—turns out to be extremely successful. Grimes (once a Rollins regular, then a collaborator with Sun Ra, before disappearing from the scene for nearly twenty years) works astonishingly well, often bowed, together with and apart from Hans, while Waits seems joined at the hip with McPherson in their cauldron-stirring time-keeping and dual solo spots, which are especially inventive.
With distinction, Perdomo has graced the bands of, among many others, Ravi Coltrane, David Sanchez, John Patitucci and Ray Barretto. Now it’s his time to shine. Given the exposure, he could win standing ovations at concert halls everywhere and give the Keith Jarretts of this world some strong competition.
It’s doubtful whether I’ll hear a more outstanding piano record all year. Please check it out.
|