The first sounds on El Pais De Las Maravillas (The Wonderland), the new CD from the Cuban pianist are handclaps followed by a voice, a stunning bass line and whistling. Then the scintillating keyboard work on “Guarija” takes off and you immediately know this is not going to be a typical jazz album.
The work of the trio, which features the bassist Felipe Cabrera and the drummer Ruy Adrian Lopez Nussa, the leader’s rhythmic genius of a younger brother, provides a compelling argument that Lopez Nussa represents a new vanguard of development for Afro-Cuban jazz.
He certainly has the attention of the jazz world. The pianist won the Montreux Jazz Festival’s Solo Piano competition in 2005 when he was barely out of his teens. A special guest on the album is the saxophonist David Sanchez, a Grammy award winner who’s work also pushes the envelope of what listeners expect from Latin jazz. He appears on four cuts.
“Bailando Suiza” demonstrates what these two brilliant artists can accomplish when playing together. The song begins with a piano figure that harkens back to earlier forms in Cuba—music that might have been written to support a genteel couple’s dancing under a Havana moon centuries ago. But when Sanchez’s sax comes in, the song transforms into a thoroughly modern effort. The group bridges the genres effortlessly. Later, in the same song, Lopez Nussa takes a solo that is breathtaking in its rhythmic complexity before the tune briefly returns to its musical roots in nineteenth century Cuba.
For such a young musician, Lopez Nussa also knows his way around a ballad. “Volver” is gentle and inspiring in a subtle way. The same can be said for “Amanecer,” the closing cut on the album, which features the drummer Ruy on the cajon, or Cuban box drum, and on vibraphone. Like the rest of this daring, complicated effort—it is simply beautiful.
