Gabriel Riesco Project: "Sculptures in Time"

This cooks: Chilled, gray-toned Metheny-style machinations.

It’d be horrifically cliché to state that a jazz album “cooks,” but you’ll just have to kill me as I’m left no choice in the face of such a terrific record as this one from Miami guitarist Gabriel Riesco. The compositions are ostensibly inspired by sculptor Eduardo Chillida, but transparently more so by Pat Metheny and a few post-boppers.

Chilled, gray-toned Metheny-style machinations are found throughout – the very image of the musical undercurrent of a dry spring day in Miami, come to think of it – but it’s more enthusiastic than what we’ve heard from Metheny in the last few years, a tribute both to Riesco’s youth and whatever new jack prog-jazz philosophies are abuzz in the great scholarly sewing circle these days (he’s a Magna cum Laude grad of Berklee in Boston).

The spot-on performances (along with Riesco, Ray Assaf’s piano is simply stellar) are even more miraculous when taking into account the album’s mercurial origin: the whole complicated, gorgeous thing was recorded in one day.

By Eric Saeger

Homepage: Gabriel Riesco Project