Label: Self-released, 2021
Personnel - Theo Walentiny: piano.
Influenced by Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley, the 24-year-old pianist Theo Walentiny puts together a set of seven piano improvisations in his solo debut album, Looking Glass.
The promising musician, who has been based in Brooklyn since 2014 and co-leads the Aurelia Trio with equally up-and-coming associates - the bassist Nick Dunston and the drummer Connor Parks - envisions to reveal his true self through improvisations based on sceneries painted by his imagination. As he puts it, on those occasions, he and the piano become one.
The immersive first track, “Fanfare For Looking Glass” whets our appetite by opposing tension-filled left-hand underpinnings and softer yet deep reflections that take place over the middle and right end of the keyboard. The movements create a sense of awe by themselves, but when combined, they release an impressive torrent of emotions that push the pianist to excavate more textures and melodic lines. It’s a gripping starting point.
However, this bold posture seems to faint on tracks such as “Behind Tall Grass” and “Grey They Billow”, the former being a melancholy meditation that barely includes the element of surprise, and the latter containing minimally narrated parts that weakens the communication by drowning itself in extensive, profound rumination.
“Film II” regains the nerve by grabbing a catchy cadenced flux measured with a steadfast harmonization, pointillistic detail and whimsical smears that intensify the angular perspective of the viewer. It’s not hard to identify contemporary classical and experimental jazz portions over the course of a tensile stretch rich in mood fluctuations.
“The Everlasting Rain Moves” creates an irregular framework over which patterns and cycles mutate with logic, whereas “Of Worlds Other Than” conjures a restless dream with as much inert configurations as whirling spirals.
The now poetic, now rousing ambiguities of the narrative became intermittently interesting. That being said, I’m still curious to see what Walentiny’s next step will be.
Grade C+
Favorite Tracks:
01 - Fanfare For Looking Glass ► 02 - The Everlasting Rain Moves ► 05 - Film II