Alexis Marcelo
Solo Piano
Intakt CD/DL
Alexis Marcelo's first solo piano album opens with a series of seven stabbed glow in the dark chords. The first two ring with the drama of a show tune, but by the fourth we've already veered into something else. Close voicings and syncopated anticipations lead sideways and out through to a demented stride vamp that forms the song's bedrock. From there Marcelo splices Monkish melodies with blues, spidery runs and a hard-driving walking bass in the left hand. This first composition signals something of the historical condensation of jazz and Afro-diasporic musics that this record contains.
Alexis Marcelo – a first-generation American born to a Panamanian mother and a Dominican father – came of age in the Bronx and Queens as hiphop was coalescing, so he first heard jazz via samples. While the choice to play solo piano lends the record an organic coherence, under the surface something of hiphop's cut-up approach comes through. Fragments of piano montunos sit next to meditative atonality. Lightly churchified balladry is followed by "A Saca Camote", a song by the Afro-Peruvian composer and folklorist Caitro Soto. This is music stitched together across diasporic time and space with a distinctly Latin flavour.
Aside from the debt to Monk – confirmed by the album's closing track "Eronel" – another touchstone may be Mal Waldron. Marcelo's blue vamps and cycles have a similar hypnotism to them. He switches from meditative to jaunty to dissonant and back within a matter of bars. After years collaborating with a broad swathe of New York's heterodox improvisors, this album is an elegant distillation of Marcelo's distinctive sensibilities. Let's hope that more leader dates and solos are to follow.

Contrairement à Ortiz, Alexis Marcelo est une découverte pour moi. Né d’un père dominicain et d’une mère panaméenne, il est élevé dans le Bronx et dans Queens. Enfant, il entend la salsa et le merengue, se rend dans les églises évangélistes fréquentées par les fidèle latinos – il sera plus tard directeur musical d’une église – étudie la musique classique à la Harlem School of the Art, etc. Les années 80 et 90 sont des périodes de formation et de découvertes tous azimuts : le jazz (avec Yusef Lateef), la rencontre de l’un des trois créateurs des Last Poets, Abiodum Oyewole, le rap avec GZA… soit de multiples et profondes racines qu’il conjugue avec les explorations contemporaines. tentant de rassembler tous ces acquis sur son clavier. Pianiste du genre « costaud », il démontre un jeu charpenté, clair, assuré, et sait aussi s’épancher vers la rhapsodie et terminer le disque avec un stride de Monk ! D’où un résultat musical varié voire dispersé tout au long des dix pièces qui constituent ce premier disque sur Intakt, recommandé par James Brandon Lewis et soutenu par d’autres musiciens de renom. On peut leur faire confiance. Écoutez.

https://www.culturejazz.fr/spip.php?article4517

ALEXIS MARCELO und seine Keys, erprobt in Mike Pride's From Bacteria To Boys und bei Adam Rudolph, hängten sich mir ins Ohr mit Sean Noonan auf „Memorable Sticks“ (2016) und „The Aqua Diva“ (2018) sowie in Pavees Dance bei „Tan Man's Hat“ (2019) – die Coverkunst ist also nicht zufällig von Malcolm Mooney. Nun legt der Sohn panamaischer und dominikanischer Eltern als in der Bronx und in Queens mit Salsa, Merengue, Hiphop und evangelikaler Kirchenmusik sozialisierter African Latino und mittlerweile Leader von Sonic Cosmosis sowie Duopartner von James Brandon Lewis mit Solo Piano (Intakt CD 448) sein Debut als Tastenwizard vor. Hinterfüttert ist das mit Yusef Lateefs Autophysio­psychic-Konzept, das ein tiefes Zuhören und die Schaffung musikalischer Ideen betont, die in Harmonie mit der Umgebung und mit sich selbst wurzeln. Der Dekalog umfasst 'Boogieminish Bop', 'Break Bread', 'Have Mercy', '1010 Wins', 'Chroma', 'Dance Around the Sun', 'Drifting', und 'Amargado' [verbittert], dazwischen 'A Saca Camote' des Afro­peruaners Caitro Soto und zuletzt 'Eronel' von Idrees Sulieman & Thelonious Monk. Ob­wohl alles Avancierte längst nur noch als Same Old **** quirlt, stellt Bill Shoemaker in den Linernotes die innovative Klaviermusik des 21. Jh. nochmal als bodenlos und abgehoben hin, um Marcelo damit zu kontrastieren. Egal, die mit seinem Trio Nananom Xu und den Begriffen 'Älsteste' im westafrikanischen Akan und 'Zukunft' im delawarischen Lenape angedeutete Spannweite ist auf jeden Fall beachtlich. So wie er Boogie und Monk auf launige und virtuose Weise zugleich als Erbstücke aus katzengoldenen Zeiten hämmert und dabei dennoch als neumodischer Trickster groovt. Mit rührendem, mit Frömmigkeit vertrautem Feeling beim Brotbrechen und beim betenden, trillernden Rühren an die Tas­ten. Mit einer Melodie, zu stolz und eigen, um sich als hinterhöfisch (aus America's Backyard) abtun zu lassen. Mit erst umeinandertappenden, dann zielstrebig quicken Tönen. Mit löchriger, sich selber und der Stille lauschender Modernistik. Als springender Drehwurm und Bootstomp um Sonnenflecken. Versonnen und treppab, tänzelnd und arpeggioselig. Dagegen bezaubert 'Amargado' wehmütig und zartbitter perlend mit wie mit Silberhämmerchen gedengeltem Feeling und auf die Spitze getriebenem Pathos, das sich in tanzendem Überschwang ergießt. Grandios! Und auch der Schlusspunkt ist mit dem monkish coolen 'Eronel' ein launiges Tänzchen. [BA 132 rbd]

It’s hard to argue with the press release “a mesmerizing solo debut! A contagious exuberance of playing, energetic explosive improvisations, and an openness to jazz tradition and experimentation combine on this album to create an impressive musical statement. “Almost everything he plays affirms his history and culture as a first- generation American, the son of a Panamanian mother and a Dominican father. Growing up in the Bronx and in Queens during hip hop’s first years – the first jazz he heard were samples – hearing salsa and merengue at home, attending Latino evangelical churches, and – yes – studying classical music at the Harlem School of the Arts shaped Marcelo’s identification as an African Latino with an inclusive sensibility. Once artists establish a strong identity, they can draw outside the lines, smudge them, even erase them, without diluting or diminishing that identity. That is what Alexis Marcelo has done with Solo Piano”, writes Bill Shoemaker in the liner notes.
‘Boogieminish Bop’ is a fun opener, a unique take on a tired genre. I particularly liked ‘Amargado’ with its false ending, combining flamboyance with deftness of touch. The rippling notes of the gospel ballad ‘Break Bread’ up and down the length of the keyboard is typical of Marcelo’s approach. All the material is original apart from the dramatic ‘A Saca Comote’ by Caitro Soto, the Peruvian composer on which Marcelo shows tremendous dexterity and a playful ‘Eronel’ by Thelonius Monk. A sustained chord begins ‘Chroma’ with sparse choppy chords to follow, quite unsettling experience at first; the music is as much about the spaces in between as the actual chords and notes. ‘Dance Around the Sun’ is on a kind of loop, an orbital expression of the subject matter perhaps, a clever construction becoming increasingly frenzied, getting too close to the sun perhaps? ‘Drifting’ accommodates some vamping. Alexis Marcelo is not only technically gifted but varied stylistically as well as innovatory in a most impressive display of virtuosity and imagination.

It’s hard to argue with the press release “a mesmerizing solo debut! A contagious exuberance of playing, energetic explosive improvisations, and an openness to jazz tradition and experimentation combine on this album to create an impressive musical statement. “Almost everything he plays affirms his history and culture as a first- generation American, the son of a Panamanian mother and a Dominican father. Growing up in the Bronx and in Queens during hip hop’s first years – the first jazz he heard were samples – hearing salsa and merengue at home, attending Latino evangelical churches, and – yes – studying classical music at the Harlem School of the Arts shaped Marcelo’s identification as an African Latino with an inclusive sensibility. Once artists establish a strong identity, they can draw outside the lines, smudge them, even erase them, without diluting or diminishing that identity. That is what Alexis Marcelo has done with Solo Piano”, writes Bill Shoemaker in the liner notes.
‘Boogieminish Bop’ is a fun opener, a unique take on a tired genre. I particularly liked ‘Amargado’ with its false ending, combining flamboyance with deftness of touch. The rippling notes of the gospel ballad ‘Break Bread’ up and down the length of the keyboard is typical of Marcelo’s approach. All the material is original apart from the dramatic ‘A Saca Comote’ by Caitro Soto, the Peruvian composer on which Marcelo shows tremendous dexterity and a playful ‘Eronel’ by Thelonius Monk. A sustained chord begins ‘Chroma’ with sparse choppy chords to follow, quite unsettling experience at first; the music is as much about the spaces in between as the actual chords and notes. ‘Dance Around the Sun’ is on a kind of loop, an orbital expression of the subject matter perhaps, a clever construction becoming increasingly frenzied, getting too close to the sun perhaps? ‘Drifting’ accommodates some vamping. Alexis Marcelo is not only technically gifted but varied stylistically as well as innovatory in a most impressive display of virtuosity and imagination.