Aruán Ortiz Créole Renaissance - Itk441 - Jazz - by Intakt Records

Aruán Ortiz, celebrated piano cubist, distinguished jazz improviser, award-winning composer and idiosyncratic stylist, presents Créole Renaissance, his second solo piano album on Intakt Records which comes eight years after Cub(an)ism. “Ortiz is renowned for his prodigious technique, and multiple lineages converge in his hands, from Schoenberg, Messiaen, and Ligeti to Bebo Valdés, Don Pullen, and Cecil Taylor”, writes Brent Hayes Edwards and adds “Aruán Ortiz’s stunning pianistic reflections on the implications of a Créole Renaissance start here, placing the music within a long history of collective Black study. Ortiz explains that he was inspired above all by the ways Négritude poets such as Aimé and Suzanne Césaire and René Ménil deployed ‘surrealist techniques to shape a new kind of narrative of Afro-diasporic life and history in the Caribbean.’ If Ortiz’s music is adamantly innovative and forward-looking, in other words, it reminds us of its deep roots in traditions of Black experimentation.” Créole Renaissance combines intellectual depth, emotionality and creativity to create a fascinating musical statement.