Buenos Aires, Argentina has long supported creative impulses, including music from classical to tango to free improvisation. Three releases—two recent, the third a sampler of the previous eight years—show several directions these impulses have taken (Happy Día de la Independencia—Jul. 9th).
Trumpeter Sebastián Greschuk’s Paisaje swims in the mainstream tradition of postbop, adapting its vocabulary and mannerisms with a certain personal flair. The music on this evenly paced set is both relaxed and urgent, the melodies drawn from the serpentine architecture of bop and peppered with flat-five intervals, all prodded along with gentle syncopation. “La Aspera”, rendered on buttery flugelhorn, is an affecting tune, the solo showing Greschuk’s penchant for sequenced ideas and gently squeezed grace notes. Avoiding the highest register, he prefers to speak in the warmer, gruffer tones available to the lower regions of the horn. Pianist Nicolas Boccanera trades between acoustic and electric instruments, like Greschuk showing a penchant for patterned lines, yet equally fond of fluid, textural gestures. Bassist Matías Crouzeilles is something of a sleeper here, making his strongest moves later in the game: a persuasive soliloquy of sliding double-stops introducing “Boomerang”; then a swinging solo over the tune, adeptly complemented by drummer Sebastián de Urquiza (just before Boccanera joins them for an interactive threesome); and finally a third turn on the impressionistic closer “Moñongo-Cherry”.