Young Argentinian pianist-composer Pía Hernández has studied classical music and jazz in Buenos Aires, including in residencies with French clarinetist Louis Sclavis, and American sax hero Tim Berne and pianist Marilyn Crispell, with whom Hernández performed few times in Buenos Aires. Relicario is her second album as a band-leader, following last year’s Hernández Trio, «Lilith» (Irazú, 2019), and was recorded at Studio Doctor F in Buenos Aires in March 2020.
Hernández Quintero features trumpeter Valentín Garvie, tenor sax player Pablo Moser, double bass player Ignacio Szulga, who also plays in Hernández Trio and she plays in his quintet, and drummer Federico Isasti. Hernández’ music juggles cleverly between two poles – on one hand, well-crafted, disciplined and complex melodic structures that flow according to their enigmatic inner logic, and on the other hand, improvised, fiery and intense outbursts that highlight the strong, individual voices in her quintet. This challenging compositional strategy that knows how to produce the best from her quintet musicians and let the quintet sound as much bigger than the sum of its own musicians owes much to the seminal work of Berne.
Szulga and Moser enjoy the freedom that Hernández enables on the fiery, opening piece «Che», obviously, a homage to Che Guevara. Hernández leads the beautiful ballad «Las grandes penas se destruyen por su propia plenitud», with a title that references Oscar Wilde’s «The Picture of Dorian Gray», and together with Garvie and Szluga, she sketches a touching melody, that brings to mind Crispell’s lyricism. Szluga soloing alone on the «Intro Final» and introduces the lush, lyrical melody of «Final». The driving rhythmic basis of «La Torre», «Skuld», performed also by Hernández’s Sextet, the swinging and playful «Golem», and «Un perro», stress the close interplay of the whole quintet as well as the impressive manner that Hernández bridges compositional elements with spontaneous improvisation.
Eyal Hereuveni
Pía Hernández (p), Valentín Garvie (tp), Pablo Moser (ts), Ignacio Szulga (b), Federico Isasti (dr)
