Label: Blue Note Records, 2021

Personnel - Arturo O’Farrill: piano, composition; Adam O'Farrill: trumpet, flugelhorn; Rafi Malkiel: euphonium, trombone; Alejandro Aviles: flute, saxophones; Travis Reuter: guitar; Vince Cherico: African percussion, drums; Carlos "Carly" Maldonado: maracas, marimba; Victor Pablo Garcia Gaetan: conga, cuica, dumbeq; Bam Bam Rodriguez: bass; Zack O'Farrill: drums.

Pianist, composer and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill became widely known for giving the Latin jazz genre a relevant contemporary dimension, often in command of his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. For Dreaming in Lions, his latest record and debut on the iconic Blue Note Records, he shortened the big band into a 10-piece ensemble that performs two suites while trading the traditional Latin luster for something more sophisticated and steeped in modernity.

Combining poignancy, irreverent warmth and explosions of spontaneous color, these orchestrations have their inception with “Del Mar”, the first of five movements that compose the Despedida suite, a reflection on farewells. The piece is impeccably layered with polyrhythmic sumptuousness and spiced up by brass and woodwind ostinatos. There's also a magnetic piano solo delivered with inside-outside dexterity and perfectly positioned accents.

If “Beauty Cocoon” and “La Llorona” (not to be mistaken with the folk Mexican song) feel very Cuban at their core, then “Intruso” and “Ensayo Silencio” plunge into different currents of fusion. The former, funkified by an amazing groove, includes horn counterpoint, block chords deftly intertwined with winning piano runs, and a swinging dixie-inflected blues passage over which Alejandro Aviles shines in a flurry of pithy soprano sounds. In opposition, the latter piece falls into something you can dance to, an inspired marriage of funk, jazz, disco and R&B. Here, we can also enjoy ad-lib volleys between the horn players.

All these eclectic elements return in “Struggles and Strugglets”, the sixth movement of the Dreaming in Lions suite, whose inspiration came from Ernest Hemingway’s short novel The Old Man and the Sea. Other highlights are “Scalular”, an eloquent collage of sunny rhythms that buoys up the euphoric three-time-feel dynamics, “How I Love You”, whose gauzy romanticism wafts like a soft breeze, and the effusive “Blood in the Water”, whose dramatic piano foray gives place to a colorful Latin funk where the rock-fueled guitar of Travis Reuter stands out. The session wraps with a solo piano piece performed by O’Farrill’s wife, the classical pianist Alison Deane.

This is a cohesive and coherent record that points to jazz’s ever evolving fusion of rhythms and sounds tied to a rich cultural history.