THIS is solo piano at its most intense, inventive and beautiful. Aruan Ortiz, born in Santiago de Cuba in 1973, pays particular homage to the Martinican poet and Communist member of the French National Assembly Aime Cesaire’s student days in Paris in his new album Creole Renaissance, employing “surrealist techniques to shape a new kind of narrative of Afro-diasporic life and history in the Caribbean.”

Melody infused with wayward improvisation, introspection with musical activism, distance with proximity, and history with now-times: tracks like the spoken-word From The Distance Of My Freedom or The Great Camouflage reveal all the white masks falling away in Ortiz’s insurgent notes.

Ortiz writes of his “creative journey reconnecting my artistic vision with the layered complexity of my cultural background as a Cuban artist working across continents.” Just hear his defiant pianism through We Belong To Those Who Say No To Darkness. It challenges these racist, populist times to new assertive ways of freedom.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jazz-album-reviews-chris-searle-october-10-20255

Aruán Ortiz: „Créole Renaissance“ – Vieldeutige Gestalten

Aruán Ortiz’ gedankenreiches Klavier-Solo-Album „Créole Renaissance“.

Die Renaissance trennte das sogenannte Mittelalter von der sogenannten Neuzeit und dauerte, je nach Region, an die drei Jahrhunderte. Sie wurde erst rückblickend so genannt und mit dem ebenso rückblickenden Etikett einer Neubelebung griechischer und römischer Antike aufgeladen. Diese Renaissance blieb nicht die einzige. Nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, also vor gut einem Jahrhundert, entstand in New York die sogenannte Harlem Renaissance, getragen von Zugewanderten aus dem ländlichen Süden der Vereinigten Staaten und inhaltlich geprägt von schwarzen Künstlern, Künstlerinnen und Intellektuellen.

Und nun spielt der afro-cubanische Pianist Aruán Ortiz mit dem Gedanken an eine kreolische Renaissance. Er spielt diesen Gedanken ausführlich durch auf seinem Klavier-Solo-Album „Créole Renaissance“. Wer allerdings bei dem Etikett „afrokubanisch“ an rhythmisch pulsenden Mainstream Jazz denkt, liegt, um das gleich zu sagen, daneben.

Alles Kreolische ist Ergebnis von Imperialismus. Das Wort kommt aus dem Portugiesischen oder dem Spanischen und umschreibt ursprünglich Bevölkerungen, die in Kolonien aus der Verbindung von Menschen unterschiedlicher ethnischer Herkünfte entstanden.

Ortiz’ Album beginnt mit der Komposition „L’étudiant noir“. Das war der Titel einer einflussreichen Zeitschrift, die 1935 in Paris von schwarzen Intellektuellen gegründet wurde und beredtes Publikationsorgan einer kulturellen schwarzen Selbstbehauptung war. In Ortiz’ Komposition scheinen von überall her Fäden zusammenzulaufen. Die komplette Klaviatur wird von unten bis oben genutzt, ohne dass da etwas konsistent zu einem Stil zusammenfände. Denn es geht nicht etwa um eine nostalgische African-Roots-Feier. Es geht vielmehr um eine musikalisch gestaltete Reflexion kultureller Übergänge, Hohlräume, Beschädigungen, Überlagerungen, Brechungen, die in der Diaspora zwangsläufig entstanden sind und hinter die niemand zurückkann.

Musik, die die Schatten überwinden will
Ortiz’ Musik ist nicht nur von afroamerikanischen Musikern wie Duke Ellington, Art Tatum oder Cecil Taylor beeinflusst, sondern auch von Arnold Schönberg, Olivier Messiaen und György Ligeti. Das Kreolische ist immer Ergebnis einer Vermischung, einer neu entstandenen Komplexität, einer unbekannten Art der Artikulation. Nichts strömt hier einfach so dahin. Jeder Anschlag, jeder Ton erscheint als Ergebnis einer Veränderung oder einer Reflexion.

Auf die Spitze getrieben wird diese gedankenreiche Arbeit am Klavier in dem Stück „We Belong to Those Who Say No To Darkness“. Ortiz hat dafür das Klavier sorgsam präpariert, so dass kein Ton erklingt, der nicht an ein anderes Saiteninstrument erinnerte, an Zither, Oud, Gitarre. So erhält die Idee einer Vermischung kultureller Ausdrucksweisen eine irisierende Gestalt, die sich von jeglicher Eindeutigkeit und Identität verabschiedet hat. Die sich dabei vielleicht nicht mit dem Imperialismus versöhnt, der zu dieser Art von kreolischem Paradigma geführt hat, die aber die Schatten überwinden will, die Kolonialismus und Imperialismus auf das Leben geworfen haben.

Der einzige Musiker, den Ortiz auf seinem Soloalbum namhaft macht, ist Edward Kennedy „Duke“ Ellington, der wohl bedeutendste musikalische Vertreter der Harlem Renaissance. Der Titel des zweiten Stücks auf dem Album verweist auf Ellingtons „Sophisticated Lady“ und zugleich („Seven Aprils in Paris“) auf Zeitschriften wie „L’Étudiant noir“ oder „Légitime Défense“ oder „Tropiques“, die in der Pariser Diaspora immer nur für ein paar Jahre erschienen.

https://www.fr.de/kultur/musik/der-afro-cubanische-pianist-arua-ortiz-und-sein-gedankenreiches-klavier-solo-album-creole-renaissance-vieldeutige-gestalten-93961062.htmll

Aruán Ortiz, il pianoforte come memoria spezzata

Qualcosa di implacabile attraversa la musica di Aruán Ortiz, come se ogni gesto sulla tastiera fosse chiamato a rispondere a una storia troppo lunga per essere dimenticata, troppo dolorosa per essere elusa. Con Créole Renaissance, secondo album solista dopo Cub(an)ism, il pianista cubano residente a New York affronta non tanto il pianoforte quanto il peso stratificato delle eredità coloniali, delle genealogie nere, della memoria diasporica. Lo fa nella lingua che gli è più propria: un pianismo frantumato e febbrile, denso di silenzi e abissi, dove l’improvvisazione non è mai mero esercizio di libertà ma un modo di scavare, scomporre, riattraversare.
Registrato in due giorni intensi a fine 2024, l’album si nutre dei fantasmi e delle energie della Négritude: Aimé e Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, le voci poetiche che seppero usare surrealismo e immaginazione come armi contro l’oblio. Ortiz ne assorbe lo spirito: le sue miniature pianistiche sono interrogazioni più che affermazioni, aperture e ferite.

In L’Étudiant Noir il contrasto tra registri acuti e profondi si fa corpo sonoro di un risveglio della coscienza, mentre Légitime Défense si agita come un campo di battaglia interiore. Altrove emergono squarci impressionistici: Seven Aprils in Paris si nutre di ombre e frammenti di Ellington (Sophisticated Lady), evocati e subito dissolti come presenze lontane. The Haberdasher pare un appunto monodico monkiano, isolato e pungente, mentre The Great Camouflage è un’oscura meditazione sul silenzio e sulla sospensione, un cammino tra note rade che diventano pensiero.
Le due Miniatures offrono un contrasto: la prima, scattante e volatile, attraversa la tastiera con nervosa leggerezza; la seconda si radica invece in accordi poderosi, quasi rituali. Nel cuore dell’album, We Belong to Those Who Say No to Darkness rompe i confini del pianoforte con corde piegate, percosse, pizzicate, prolungando l’eco delle avanguardie afroamericane da Cecil Taylor in poi. E nell’ultima pagina, Lo Que Yo Quiero Es Chan Chan, il celebre tema di Compay Segundo è riconosciuto e insieme smembrato, rallentato, fatto deragliare: memoria cubana filtrata attraverso malinconia e resistenza.

Se Cub(an)ism era stato un manifesto di geometrie astratte e rigorose, Créole Renaissance scava più in profondità, nella materia viva della memoria e nella fragilità della sopravvivenza. È un disco difficile, persino ostile, che non chiede complicità ma attenzione. Ortiz non offre conforto, pone domande. Chi siamo di fronte a queste storie di colonizzazione e sradicamento? Quale lingua resta possibile dopo la frattura?
Il suo pianoforte, attraversato tanto da Schoenberg e Ligeti quanto da Bebo Valdés e Don Pullen, diventa terreno di collisione e rinascita. Non c’è celebrazione in questa “rinascita creola”: c’è piuttosto un’urgenza, la necessità di trasformare la memoria in suono, l’assenza in presenza, la diaspora in linguaggio. In un’epoca che dimentica in fretta, Ortiz ci costringe a ricordare.

Créole Renaissance non è soltanto un grande album di piano solo, è una prova di resistenza, un atto politico e poetico insieme. E, soprattutto, è musica che non concede scampo: ci chiama a un ascolto radicale, totale, come pochi sanno fare oggi.

https://offtopicmagazine.net/2025/09/29/aruan-ortiz-creole-renaissance/

Créole Renaissance is pianist Aruán Ortiz’ seventh release from Intakt as leader or co-leader, and his Créole Renaissance is pianist Aruán Ortiz’ seventh release from Intakt as leader or co-leader, and his second solo album for the label, coming some eight years after the brilliant Cub(an)ism. that earlier invocation of both Caribbean culture and the compound perspectives of modernism is similarly at work in this collection of pieces. It specifically celebrates the 1930s “Négritude movement” in paris, its literary periodicals and martinique-born poets (Aimé and Suzanne Césaire and rené ménil) supplying the titles for such Ortiz compositions as “L’Étudiant noir” and “Légitime Défense” (as discussed in brent Hayes edwards’ illuminating liner notes). If Cuban jazz piano frequently emphasizes the island’s historical and cultural links to the decorative flourishes of european romanticism, Ortiz is very
different: his playing can be spare or dense, but either way, it is intense, percussive and mercurially alert to rhythmic possibility. Its roots reach to ellington, directly referenced in the title of “Seven Aprils in paris and A Sophisticated Lady”, but there are also affinities with pianists Don pullen and Andrew Hill. the nine tracks range from taut miniatures to more expansive visions. the two-minute “première miniature” consists of rapid ascending phrases growing ever more exuberant and complex. “Deuxieme miniature (Dancing)”, only slightly longer, moves more characteristically up and down, while the still brief “Légitime Défense” is a joyous explosion, close-voiced clusters running riot across the keyboard. moving to more sustained pieces, there are strangely surreal dreamscapes. “We belong to those Who Say No to Darkness” is taut drama, isolated bass tones matched to a shimmering banjo-like prepared middle register and occasional chords. “the Great Camouflage” is a somber elegy haunted by beauty, slow brooding chords and isolated tones gradually ascending the keyboard, with sometimes palpable silences or ringing harmonics that gradually
fade. the longest track, “From the Distance of my Freedom”, is a remarkable event in the history of jazz and spoken word: Ortiz speaking as well as playing the piano—part dialogue, part obligato, part solo. The text includes a few sentences, but it’s shaped by singular words and cellular phrases, many of which end in “-ism” (“primitivism versus modernism,” “surrealism,” “post-colonialism,” “neologism.”
Also repeated: “black renaissance.”) Somehow simultaneously serious and playful, the spoken component ends at the five-minute mark, giving way to the free dance of Ortiz’ piano playing. This is music of intense creativity and emotion, a commemorative dance between lament and liberation.

Le pianiste cubain de Brooklyn évoque l’émergence d’une culture africaine qui s’affirme dans l’univers européen et états-unien. On croise ici le souvenir de L’étudiant noir, éphémère journal animé par Aimé Césaire et Léopold Senghor au milieu des années trente, et d’autres publications de même nature. Cette renaissance créole trouve aussi sa source dans le mouvement Harlem Renaissance des USA à partir des années 20, avec notamment une allusion à un thème de Duke Ellington. Un parcours musical abstrait, dans une esthétique qui convoque autant les musiques de l’avant garde européenne du vingtième siècle que les sonorités des musiques traditionnelles, et bien sûr toutes les métamorphoses musicales brassées par l’univers caribéen. Mais ici l’abstraction n’occulte pas la sensibilité sonore et musicale. Elle magnifie au contraire la pluralité de ces matériaux dans la singularité de peuples dispersés par l’histoire. Et c’est une formidable excursion dans la mémoire : pas une mémoire courte mais une mémoire longue, qui prend en compte l’essence des cultures plutôt que l’écume des mondes et des modes. À déguster avec tout le soin de l’attention et de la plongée dans la perception la plus fine. Et là le plaisir est considérable

https://lesdnj.over-blog.com/2025/09/aruan-ortiz-creole-renaissance.html

In seinen Projekten verschmilzt der aus Santiago de Cuba stammende Pianist und Komponist Aruán Ortiz Einflüsse aus der zeitgenössischen klassischen Musik, dem Avantgarde Jazz mit Folklore seiner Heimat und der Magie afro-karibischer Rhythmen. Neben seinen eigenen Gruppen wirkt er im Quartett des Saxofonisten James Brandon Lewis mit. Vor rund acht Jahren erhielt „Cub(an)ism“ die höchste Bewertung beim Down Beat Magazin. Auf seinem zweiten Solo-Album "Créole Renaissance" reflektiert Aruán Ortiz die Geschichte der Négritude - einer Mitte der Dreißigerjahre gegründeten antikolonialen, politischen und kulturellen Bewegung - in seiner Musik. Das Eindringen in dunkle Klangwelten und die Entdeckung geheimnisvoller Motive lotet Ortiz in "L'Etudiant Noir" mit tiefen Tönen aus. In "Légitime Défense" erzielt der Pianist mit granithaften Tonfiguren und melodischen Clustern eine enorme Klangfülle. Mit strukturierten Improvisationen definiert er in "Lo Que Yo Quiero Es Chan Chan", einem bekannten Song des kubanischen Sänger Compay Segundo vom Buena Vista Social Club, die Kunst der Abstraktion. Superb!

This is the Aruán Ortiz of Cub(an)ism (Intakt, 2017), where he convinces as a tough-minded and idiosyncratic conceptualist who knows how to keep you on the edge of the seat, rather than the free flowing soloist in the James Brandon Lewis Quartet, or even his own trio on Live In Zurich (Intakt, 2017). Once again the focus is on solitary exploration, birthing a music that is austere, unpredictable, and steeped in historical resonance. As detailed in the liners and through the track titles, it is inspired by the flowering of the Négritude, an anti-colonial movement founded by a group of African and Caribbean writers and intellectuals who sought to reclaim the value of blackness and African culture in 1930s Paris.

Ortiz embeds those ideas in a language where silence, attack, and contrast hold as much weight as melody or rhythm. The opening “L’étudiant noir” establishes the album’s tension in gripping fashion: irregular Morse-code clunks in the bass register meet terse, extreme treble rebuttals, a juxtaposition that serves as a reiterated touchstone, before introducing scuttling, asymmetrical runs from the keys between. Ortiz’s clipped notes and cellular repetitions conjure a distant echo of Cecil Taylor, though he avoids the latter’s torrential density, favoring instead a leaner, more surgical approach.

Further hints of Taylor’s legacy arise in the two “Miniatures” – one forging phrases that blur into hornlike lines, the other descending in prancing intervals – but they are brief sketches rather than homages. His text setting in “From the Distance of My Freedom” makes the program’s political grounding explicit. Ortiz intones words referencing the Black Renaissance, punctuating them with spare figures and melodic shards that expand into broader textures after the recitation subsides.

The ten cuts could easily pass as improvisations in their elusive structures and resistance to overt meter. Afro-Cuban roots surface only in spectral form, deconstructed to the point of near-erasure, as the pianist draws more heavily from 20th Century European and American avant-garde traditions. His nod towards Ellington on “Seven Aprils in Paris (and A Sophisticated Lady)” is sparse and ruminatory, pitting a glacial left hand against some shimmering flourishes in the right. Even though he varies his language, a similar contrast animates “We Belong To Those Who Say No To Darkness” which toggles between dampened strikes and plucked strings yielding oddly metallic overtones, and also “The Haberdasher,” in which flowing cascades spar with a halting bottom end.

The final “Lo que yo quiero es Chan Chan” anchors the recital in Cuban lineage, reshaping a fragment of Francisco Repilado’s (aka Compay Segundo) infectious “Chan Chan” into a recurring motif that morphs through multiple guises. Yet even here, Ortiz resists celebration, folding familiar material into a framework of contemplation. Créole Renaissance confirms him as a pianist not seeking to dazzle with virtuosity, but one probing the intersection of history, identity, and sound with unflinching clarity.

https://pointofdeparture.org/PoD92/PoD92MoreMoments4.html

Aruán Ortiz’s energy, his skill at creating surprises and variations, and his impressive keyboard mastery make his solo album fascinating.

Now living in Brooklyn, the Cuban-born pianist Aruán Ortiz has a philosophic bent and an impressive list of accomplishments. He is featured on some of the most celebrated, adventurous recordings of the last two decades, including Nicole Mitchell’s Maroon Cloud, Don Byron’s Random Dances and (A)Tonalities, Esperanza Spalding’s Junjo, and Steve Turre’s Woody’s Delight. He has composed for string ensemble and recorded repeatedly as a soloist, with trios, and with mid-sized groups.

His new solo disc, Créole Renaissance, refers to the French Négritude movement of the ’30s: three of his titles, beginning with “L’Etudiant noir” are named after short-lived, but historically important, journals of the movement. On “From the Distance of my Freedom,” the fourth number of Créole Renaissance, Ortiz speaks as well as plays. He doesn’t deliver an argument. Instead, without comment or context, he presents material for listeners to contemplate. “My history speaks through my existentialism,” he asserts, as well as “from my ancestral mysticism.” He repeatedly utters the phrase, “Black Renaissance.” Presumably, Ortiz is that renaissance. He plays from his Afro-Cuban experience, and with “no masks allowed.” “Primitivism versus modernism” is one of the dualities he mentions, but he then adds, “Surrealism.” These labels are simply placed in front of us — could they be overlapping alternatives? Meanwhile, between this series of nouns, the pianist supplies seemingly casual phrases on the piano that are often dissonant and unresolved.

Interestingly, although there are allusions to Afro-Cuban music, Ortiz is very free with rhythms: he never precisely swings nor does he show an interest in extended, continuous pulses. Following the verbal part of “From the Distance of my Freedom,” he solos restlessly, dashing all over the keyboard. He is fearless about when to pause or change tempo. His improvisations here and elsewhere include darting lines in the right hand, and heavy-handed sustained chords. Ortiz ends “From the Distance” with dissonant chords that clash like cymbals: they introduce a final sustained bass note.

The recorded sound of this Intakt disc emphasizes that stereo effect. We can clearly hear the way Ortiz’s left hand works. On “Première Miniature (Créole Renaissance)” his moods shift. Ortiz sounds cheerful as he scurries squirrel-like about the keyboard. On the other hand, “The Great Camouflage” is bleak. It moves like a dirge, a low note in the bass repeatedly answered by chords in the mid-range, with longish pauses as if we were meant to anticipate, not hear, the answering chords. I am not sure what the origin of “The Haberdasher” is, but it’s another playful piece, with staccato notes irregularly accented and widely spaced in pitch. Again, we don’t hear a continuous pulse, yet the music remains engrossing. “Seven Aprils in Paris (and a Sophisticated Lady)” begins soberly, with single notes intoned out of tempo. The occasional chord is sustained through the pedal. It’s a dark-sounding piece, not what this listener expected from “April in Paris” (though it tends to rain in that city all that month).

“Légitime Défense” feels like a series of lightning strikes. The track opens with clusters of notes up high. Then we hear sprays of staccato single notes and nervous answering chords played at a quick tempo. About two minutes in there is a pause, as if the piece had to regroup. This is free music, mostly free of obvious melodies, tempo, and consistent harmonies. That sounds like a lot of negatives, but Ortiz’s energy, his skill at creating surprises and variations, and his impressive keyboard mastery make his solo album fascinating. He makes it move in what I hear as comprehensible ways. It’s playful, not at all pompous. This pianist’s sound is unique, and well worth a listen.

https://artsfuse.org/316000/jazz-album-review-aruan-ortizs-creole-renaissance-a-unique-sound/

Der Titel dieses Albums lässt ein Feuerwerk karibischer
Rhythmen erwarten, vielleicht à la Gonzalo
Rubalcaba. Fast schon düster hingegen wirken
die ersten Töne zu ”L’étudiant noir”. Die sich
dahinter verbergende Spannung erinnert an ”Légitime
Défense” – so der Name einer Zeitschrift
aus den Dreissigerjahren, welche die Négritude
zum Thema hatte –, ein Begriff, der hier als Titel
des dritten Tracks auf der CD vorkommt. Im weiteren
Verlauf der Setlist werden die düsteren
Klänge dann allerdings zunehmend aufgelöst,
z. B. im bedeutenden ”We Belong to Those Who
Say No to Darkness”. Ortiz ist ein begnadeter
Techniker, der mit den Avantgarden des Jazz und
der zeitgenössischen bzw. Neuen Musik ebenso
vertraut ist wie mit den karibischen Traditionen
aus der eigenen Biographie. Die Titel seiner
”Creole Renaissance” sind eine Art ideologischer
Überbau, mit dem er sich ebenso auseinandersetzt
wie mit der Jazztradition, etwa in Form einer
Anspielung auf ”Sophisticated Lady” oder
kubanischen Traditionen, mit Anleihen bei Chan
Chan, das der Buena Vista Social Club in die
ganze Welt getragen hat. Eben, die ganze Welt ist
hier einbezogen in dieser eklektischen und gleichzeitig
kompakten, bewusst inszenierten Musik
von Aruán Ortiz. Wie der Titel des Songs ”From
the Distance of My Freedom” verrät, geht es um
eine Reflexion auf zwei Ebenen, der musikalischen
und der existenziellen.

"Two absorbing solo piano albums that in different ways reject the artistic imperative of a signature style. That is, they can't immediately be recognised from their opening notes. The work of Norwegian pianist Christian Wallumrød falls imprecisely between contemporary composition, jazz and improv. His Ensemble has recorded on ECM, and he's released the solo albums Pianokammer (2014) and Speaksome (2021). To describe Wallumrød as an unflashy player is an understatement.

The pieces on Percolation are rather less minimal, and less electronic, than on Speaksome. But the album opens with the halting, spare ""Marrowing"" and the nervous, fugitive ""Noble Fir"". Both pieces reflect Wallumrød's intense, narrow-focus interiority. Nordic church music's lilting plangency pervades ""Ny Gitar"", ""Deer Naylla"" and ""The Sing"". There are occasional electronic sounds, most notably on ""You Didn't"", which features echoey autoharp against an almost infrasonic doom-laden beat. On ""Higher Than Your Gluteus"" a looping, spongy acid house beat is gradually submerged by dark, minimal boogie-woogie.

Aruán Ortiz's album is less ingratiating, more uncompromising - though it generally projects a more conventional piano style. Créole Renaissance celebrates the racial self-consciousness of négritude, a concept developed by the Paris based journal L'Étudiant Noir (1935). The exploratory opening track, with the same title, seems to be constantly trying to evolve a groove, but failing. Generally, in fact, rather than grooves as such, the album features their residues. Figures gesture at montuno riffs before dissolving.

Ortiz always begins de novo, rejecting a signature style. But he's a personal artist nonetheless, his stylistic continuity developing a groundbreaking synthesis of Western modernism and Afro-Cuban roots music. ""Seven Aprils In Paris (And A Sophisticated Lady)"" is funereal and macabre while the lugubrious ""The Great Camouflage"" moves at a glacial pace - there's nothing uptempo here. Ortiz exploits occasional extended techniques, notably on ""We Belong To Those Who Say No To Darkness"" where strings are dampened to nasal thuds and metallic strums. The result is a sombre meditation by a modern master.