We’re thrilled to share that David Virelles’ Nuna has been included on the New York Times list of Best Jazz Releases of 2022. Giovanni Russonello says of David, “David Virelles pays attention to detail at every level… And on “Nuna,” his first solo-piano record, he spreads that across all 88 keys.”
It’s high praise indeed for a recording we were excited to release and even more excited to see receive the praise it so richly deserves.
David Virelles’s first solo piano recording, Nuna, is available now on both, CD from our store, and download via BandCamp.
Nuna is a book of compositions for solo piano by Cuban-American pianist and composer David Virelles. A 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Virelles has worked with musicians as distinct as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Tom Harrell and Milford Graves. His release Continuum (Pi 2012) was named the best jazz release of that year by The New York Times. After three esteemed releases on the ECM label, Virelles returned to Pi with Igbo Alakorin: The Singers Grove (2017), which was voted top Latin Jazz album in that year’s NPR Jazz Critics Poll.
Virelles describes Nuna as “a metaphor for the piano as an ancient instrument.” While the sonorities of the Steinway Model D concert grand piano are often on full display in his playing, he pays equal emphasis to tempering the instrument’s natural resonance, connecting it more to the sound of folkloric instruments such as thumb pianos, harps and drums. He achieves this purely through touch and pedaling, without any other mechanical manipulation or “prepping.” Indeed, the entire album is a demonstration of Virelles’s masterful control of shading, dynamics and timbre.
It’s unmistakably the work of a singular probing intellect. As with each of Virelles’s projects, Nuna bridges the folkloric with the contemporary, while shrouded in an aura of mystery.
2021 has seen a return to normal of sorts for Pi Recordings. It was also our 20th anniversary, and while the events that we had in the works to celebrate never came to fruition because of the pandemic, the occasion was still an opportunity for us to reflect on our two-decade long journey. Started by Seth Rosner with no grand plan other than to release two volumes of music by Henry Threadgill, we have somehow become one of the more highly-regarded record labels in-and-around jazz despite never releasing more than six albums in any year. For us, it’s all about finding original, uncompromising music full of risk-taking and rigorous thinking and execution. We have also always taken inspiration from our North Star Muhal Richard Abrams and his words at the inaugural meeting of the AACM: “First of all, number one, there’s original music, only.” But really what the label represents is a distillation of our ever-evolving taste in music, which has helped keep the catalogue from getting stagnant. In a sense, the label is one very long journey that we have had the privilege to take with all of you.
We wish everyone health and safety in these difficult and turbulent times and look forward to the day that we can all come together once again in the presence of live music.
Forward motion.
Seth and Yulun
Pi Recordings
