Old sounds, new times

Gonzalo Rubalcaba, born in Havana, Cuba, in 1963, graduated from his home city's Institute of Fine Arts, studied classical piano and was embraced as a musical prodigy by some of his country's most renowned performers, such as Pacquito D'Rivera and Chucho Valdes.

Visiting US jazz giants such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Haden recognised his genius in the mid-1980s and tried to arrange for him to perform in the US. Blocked by the US State Department from entering the US until 1993, he was only finally admitted as a resident of the Dominican Republic.

Since 1990, he has been recording for Blue Note and his new album Avatar, his 13th for the label, finds him as part of a quintet of New York-based musicians who had been on the road together for three weeks prior to the recording.

Fellow Cuban Yosvany Terry is the saxophonist, Mike Rodriguez plays trumpet and flugelhorn, on bass is Matt Brewer and the drummer is Marcus Gilmore.

Rubalcaba's lone chimes introduce Looking In Introspection, before his band mates join him in a free blow.

Terry's soprano breathes some cool fire and Rodriguez joins a call-and-response with Rubalcaba's interventions like those of a third horn.

This Is It is the second of three Terry compositions on the album. Rubalcaba's changes of pace, spatial consciousness and energetic drive are all powerfully manifested, as are the composer's springing alto phrases and Rodriguez's poise and power.

Aspiring To Normalcy, a Brewer original, has an ominous solo preface by Rubalcaba, before Gilmore's brushes stroke Rodriguez's horn to an inventively complex chorus.

Just over four minutes of Horace Silver's anthemic Peace are played with a beautiful lyricism by Rubalcaba with just bass and drums, the gentleness seeping from his keys. Hipside has altogether a more defiant edge with the pianist strident, Terry's rampant alto ready for trouble and Rodriguez blowing a fanfare of audacity.

Infantil is a tribute to the Yorkshire guitarist John McLaughlin full of jazz wit, surprise and trickery from all members, while the closer, Preludio Corto No.2 (Tu Amor Era Falso) by Cuban composer Alejandro Garcia Caturlas (1906-1940) is given an arrangement for quintet by Rubalcaba.

This is jazz without improvisation, its beauty resting on harmonies and some stunning piano artistry by Rubalcaba - an eloquent closure to a resonating album.

Jackie Terrasson, who is two years younger than his Cuban label-mate, has also been a featured Blue Note piano man for more than a decade.

Born in Berlin of French and US parents and raised in Paris, he was groomed in the classical tradition and crossed the Atlantic to study piano at the famed Berklee Academy in Boston, before returning to Paris and finally decamping back to New York in 1990, winning the prestigious Thelonious Monk Competition in 1993.

His new album Mirror is a solo effort, featuring a selection of standards, bop classic Ellingtonia, his own originals and even America The Beautiful, played with an oblique reading full of dissonant phrases, pauses and sudden spurts and corners.

Cherokee is racked with powerful cadences and abrupt advances, while the ballad Everything Happens To Me is an essay in sonic bewilderment, shaped beautifully as a statement of the unforeseen.

He launches into Caravan, playing on the very edge of its familiar theme.

This is barely perceptible - a contrast to his performance of Carol King's You've Got A Friend, where the melody's contours stay paramount.

The lucidity of his own tune Juvenile springs from his keys and the enigmatic Just A Gigolo, so favoured by jazz geniuses from Louis Armstrong to Monk himself, is chimed playfully, its eternally ironic questions still suspended.

Little Red Ribbon is Terrasson's tune in solidarity with Aids sufferers everywhere - strong and jaunty, full of movement, love and hope and with changes of pace towards the reflective and defiant. Powerful music indeed.

But, for me, the album's finest moments are in Terrasson's own Tragic Mulatto Blues, just three minutes of naked and unanswered keyboard calls and responses aimed directly at both heart and head, running with the very identity and life of jazz. Old piano sounds for new times, without a doubt.