# David Virelles has opened minds of listeners far and wide: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/02/05/david-virelles-has-opened-minds-of-listeners-far-and-wide-video/
- Published: 2018-02-05T13:36:14+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Since touching hallowed ECM ground in 2013, pianist David Virelles has opened 
minds of listeners far and wide. Despite the expansive reach of his art, however,
the experience of hearing it live is nothing if not inward. Joined for two nights
at Jazz Standard by percussionists Román Díaz and Keisel Jiménez, along with bassist
Rashaan Carter, Virelles proved that at its core improvisation is about getting 
in touch with your own.**

Dampened block chords set the tone for an evening of honest unraveling. Every note
spilling from his Steinway seemed to lead us underground, where darkness was punctuated
by beating and bassing. Occasionally Díaz broke the spell with splashes of bells,
luring the audience away from the temptation of fantasy and into vivid reality. 
Such catharses were peppered throughout, each a signpost along the path toward parsing
the quartet’s spiritual grammar. Theirs was indeed a cosmic impulse made flesh, 
glorified in chants and other intimate rituals. Expectations were thus challenged
at every turn. Rather than coalescing from hints and fragments, grooves fell as 
if from cloudy skies like the voices of souls whose language is knowable only to
the initiated.

Even in light of these ephemeral associations, Virelles’s playing was resolutely
tactile. He was the hardworking heart, a living reminder that instruments are comprised
of the same minerals and atoms from which our bodies are spun. Even at rest, his
energy was kinetic and forward-seeking. Although grooves were never ends to a means,
whenever he did guide the band into head-nodding territory, it was only to underscore
an inescapable mortality. Every time Virelles laid a field, Jiménez and Carter would
chase the setting sun across it, erasing a path even as they drew it. They did so
not to kill the future but to revive ancient days. Any symmetries existed only to
be broken, as when shades of montuno convention left the frame just as quickly as
they entered it.

Yet it was Díaz who punched our guts in the most loving way possible. He was a force
among forces, restoring equilibrium by his very presence, made whole by acceptance
of life’s retrogression. He spoke in poetries of elemental division and congruence
alike. His quest sought no answers, because no questions needed to be asked. All
the more appropriate, then, that no titles were announced, for none would’ve held
purchase anyway in the palimpsest of our hearts. These brothers in resonance felt
everything before they played it, and played everything only as they felt it. This
was music of the marrow.

![Image result for David Virelles](https://i0.wp.com/jazzafterhours.net/uploads/
event_images/1417/virelles__large.png?w=640)

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