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TRIO SIN TIEMPO - Ritmos de Agua

577 Records (CD and Digital release)

Leo Genovese, piano; Mariano Otero, bass; Sergio Verdinelli, drums
Recorded March 6, 2021 at Estudio Insigno, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Ritmos de Agua means Water Rhythms and yes, you can feel the flow.  This is the second production of the Argentinian Trío Sin Tiempo and the players are long-established friends and jazz musicians.  Composer and keyboardist, Leo Genovese, is long established in a seemingly inexhaustible profession in music, with a celebrated solo discography and a broad gamut of collaboration with and support for many other recognised musicians.  Mariano Otero is a composer, teacher and double bass player, with a discography reaching from 2003.  He, too, comes highly acclaimed on the jazz scene in Argentina, while Sergio Verdinelli is also a composer and teacher, and a drummer to boot, and one of the most adaptable musicians in Argentina, which of course makes him one of the most highly sought after, including on the international scene.

Their new work is stirred by the latent force of water and includes foundations of jazz and local, traditional music, elements of which are variously known as candombe, chamamé, chamarrita and tango.  Candombe is a style of dance and music hailing from freed African slaves in Uruguay; chamamé is known in both Argentina and Uruguay and it may include dancing where participants embrace chest to chest, following the music without a dance routine.  Here, Chamarrita refers to a dance style in 3/4 rhythm, found commonly in Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil.  The more commonly known dance form, the tango, is a social, partner dance originating in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay.

The twelve tracks are enticed from within the common properties of water, from its mutability, its ever-fluctuating rhythms, its unstructured uncertainty and the freedom of its persistent flow.  In spite of these up-and-down properties, the wide-ranging music is delivered gently, lightly and decorously and this tends to conceal from direct view the trio’s emphasis on the superbly tweaked affinity between the musicians.  They wind up and wind down again the waters’ pressure, as though they are spinning candy floss.  The key to this I am sure is that they are hearing each other, closely listening.

All three musicians have contributed to the compositions and all have chosen unassuming phrases and tempos that lean towards the contemplative.  This offers an air of inconspicuousness and mystification quite at odds with the character of the trio.  It might be just a piano-bass-drums trio, but simple it is not.

 Reviewed by Ken Cheetham

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