Arturo O’Farrill scales down his instrumentation, although not his ambition, with the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble, a dectet including his sons, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill and drummer Zack O’Farrill.
For …Dreaming in Lions…, the agile group offers two multi-part suites created in collaboration with the Malpaso Dance Company, a Havana-based dance troupe with whom the pianist has performed.
The resultant music feels nearly as vibrant as that played by O’Farrill’s 18-piece Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. The five-part “Despedida,” a reflection on farewells, was inspired by a Jorge Luis Borges poem about a relationship’s end.
“Del Mar,” opening with the leader’s pensive, repeating piano figure and a melody initially sounded by trombonist Rafi Malkiel, deploys a blend of interlocking lines on the way to a rambunctious piano solo, and the pulsating “Intruso” splits the difference between funk and Latin grooves with boiling percussion and cross-cutting horn lines before making way for Alejandro Aviles’ sprawling soprano sax romp.
The suite is rounded out with the relaxed, flute-drenched “Beauty Cocoon”; the wah-wah-tinted “Ensayo Silencio”; and “La Llorona,” featuring an extended improvisation by bassist José Rodriguez Platiau, tugging and pulling at rhythms in tandem with three multi-percussion players.
“Dreaming in Lions,” inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea, is a nine-part suite of a different color, starting with the title piece, dominated by Travis Reuter’s flowing guitar and competing counterlines played by multiple instruments.
As ever, O’Farrill paints in multi-hued colors, sometimes all at once: quick, lithe, fusion-ish lines on “How I Love,” a chiming electric piano intro on “The Deep,”
steep Miles-ish funk under nervy solos by Adam O’Farrill and others on “Struggles and Strugglets,” acidic six-string textures on “Blood in the Water,” and unaccompanied piano, played by Alison Deane, venturing into contemporary classical terrain on the closer, “Dreams So Gold.”