Creative Inspirations

Track List

Unseen Mother I

  5:28

Pétalo

  5:53

Universal Sketches

  6:51

Refuge

  3:17

Space Dance

  5:26

Neves

  2:18

Unseen Mother II

  6:06

Sometimes I Wonder

  4:53

Para Ti

  3:16

Creative Inspirations is the debut recording by Trio Imagination, an extraordinary collaboration that brings together pianist David Virelles, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It pairs Virelles – who is known for his all-encompassing approach to creativity that is deeply-rooted in but never confined to the Cuban influences of his upbringing – with two towering figures of creative music, whose individual work have helped shape the evolution of modern jazz for more than six decades. Together, they create music that is spacious, lyrical, and uncompromisingly inventive, grounded in profound listening and collective imagination.

Trio Imagination emerged from the long musical relationship between Workman and Cyrille, whose celebrated partnership with saxophonist Oliver Lake as Trio 3 stretched across a quarter century. That group regularly collaborated with some of the finest pianists on the scene, a list that includes the likes of Geri Allen, Jason Moran, Marilyn Crispell, Vijay Iyer, Irène Schweizer, and Alexander Von Schlippenbach. When the group came to an end following Lake’s retirement from performing, Workman and Cyrille found themselves looking toward a new configuration to continue the band’s musical philosophy. Their choice of Virelles was instinctive: not only was he already appearing as a guest with Trio 3, he had also established a remarkable rapport with Cyrille in various configurations, whether in the drummer’s projects such as the quartet that also features guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Ben Street that is captured on The News on ECM, or on the pianist’s Continuum on Pi, which was named one of the top releases of 2012 by the New York Times. Cyrille describes Virelles as “A brilliant, beautiful person. He’s spiritually motivated and respectful of the jazz tradition.” According to Workman, “David is really very special. His mind is always open to possibilities and he really gives of himself to the situation without sacrificing his own thing. He’s one of the few pianists on the scene who I can say that about.” To Virelles, the opportunity to be in a collective with the two veterans is a dream come true: “They are one of the quintessential rhythm sections and have their own very specific time feel and approach to creating sound. You can study it from the outside, but being in the middle of it has been transformational. It’s increasingly rare to have the opportunity to have these types of experiences with the masters.”

Creative Inspirations was recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio, in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and the session was a homecoming of sorts for Workman and Cyrille: It was there that – throughout the 1960s – they took part in some of the most iconic recording sessions in the history of jazz. Cyrille’s appeared in 1961 on Coleman Hawkins’s The Hawk Relaxes when he was only 21. More prominently, he took part in the two groundbreaking Cecil Taylor sessions for Blue Note – Unit Structures and Conquistador! – in 1966. Workman has a longer history at the studio, appearing on landmark recordings with John Coltrane (Africa Brass), Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers (Free for All; Indestructible), Wayne Shorter (Night Dreamer; Juju; Adam’s Apple); Lee Morgan (Search for the New Land; Caramba!; Lee Morgan); Freddie Hubbard (Hubtones; Here to Stay), Archie Shepp (Four for Trane), among many others. More than half a century later, Creative Inspirations places those two musicians back in the same acoustic environment – not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as a way of connecting the accumulated experience of their careers to the present. The session was something of a surreal experience for Virelles. “Just to be in that room with Reggie and Andrew, playing the same Steinway B that Duke Ellington, Sonny Clark, Barry Harris, McCoy Tyner, Walter Davis, Jr. played, is a trip. I particularly enjoy this piano because of its history and distinct sound, which is heavy on the midrange without a lot of resonance in the lower register. I feel that by playing it I can access greater insight into the playing of the great masters and what they had to do physically to create their sounds when they were documented there.” With its 39-foot vaulted ceiling, “the room has an instantly recognizable reverb time. Having listened to recordings made there, and later having had the opportunity to record there on a few occasions, it’s fascinating to listen back to how bands connect rhythmically within that space on those albums”.

At Van Gelder, the musicians faced each other in an equilateral triangle, with nothing separating them, creating collectively in complete communion. The music feels less like a conventional piano trio than a meeting of three composers working in real time. Workman’s bass has the authority of someone who has spent a lifetime inside the architecture of jazz, playing with rhythmic elasticity and freedom. Cyrille plays drums like a painter using the widest palette of colors while masterfully controlling dynamics, tension and space. Virelles brings harmonic curiosity, rhythmic intricacy, and constant attention to dynamics that is always in service to the music. His shared Caribbean heritage with Cyrille results in a subtle rhythmic bond that is always percolating just below the surface.

Creative Inspirations moves freely between spontaneous and notated composition. Some pieces begin in openness, with the musicians sculpting the shape as they go. Others carry the more recognizable contours of preconceived elements or shared vocabulary. Afro-Caribbean rhythmic traditions appear without becoming exercises in genre. A pulse can emerge almost incidentally and then acquire weight. A melody may become a fragment, then a texture, then disappear, drifting in and out like a dream. Original compositions by Virelles include “Unseen Mother,” which originally appeared on Continuum; “Para Ti,” a piece taken from his large commissioned work Vaivén that premiered in February 2026 at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin; and “Pétalo”, which was composed specifically for the trio. Also appearing is “Refuge,” by Andrew Hill – another of Virelles’s guiding stars – from the classic Point of Departure album, which was also recorded at Van Gelder on the same piano.

Creative Inspirations captures three master improvisers in an intimate, deeply expressive dialogue that unfolds through shared intuition, revealing an ensemble whose interplay is marked by subtlety, trust, and fearless exploration. The word imagination in the group’s name is part of the group’s method. That sense of discovery defines everything they do. At Van Gelder Studio, where so much of jazz history was made, Trio Imagination does not look backward: it listens to the past, and then imagines what is to come.