Review: Aruán Ortiz’s ‘Créole Renaissance’

The well-decorated Cuban-born, Brooklyn-based pianist Aruán Ortiz has developed his reputation in the avant-garde or free jazz world. Typically, when thinking of a free jazz pianist, Cecil Taylor, or more recently, Matthew Shipp, comes to most people’s minds.  Ortiz only barely resembles either, rarely taking free-form rollicking excursions on this album. He is far more minimalist in conveying his messages. Nonetheless, he leaves a stunning impact. Each note and chord on his second solo album, Créole Renaissance (Intakt, 2025), is deliberate and carefully considered, but in furtherance of a creativity that is limitless. To these ears, he sublimates his renowned prodigious technique to shape the story while at the same time drawing from avant-garde influences, as well as Schoenberg, Messiaen, and Bebo Valdez. Listen carefully, though, to find him quoting Ellington or the Cuban artist, Company Segundo. But the album is also not an easy listen. It is meant to be provocative and is mostly somber and meditative. It demands attention and closed eyes.

It’s also gratifying when writing reviews of this type to learn something new about history. Ortiz focuses on Negritude, the cultural, political, and literary movement that awakened racial consciousness and emerged from French intellectuals in the 1930s, as an element of the African diaspora. He was inspired by poets such as Aimé and Suzanne Cesaire, as well as René Menil’s new kind of narrative of Afrodisaporic life and history in the Caribbean. These are the deep roots of Black experimentation. His writing assails the legacy of colonialism and the European power that once dominated the world. As such, half of the track titles are in French, the other half in English.

On the opening, “L’Etudiant noir,” Ortiz begins somberly in the lower register, eventually encompassing the entire keyboard in an effort to delineate the huge gaps between those in power and the powerless, as gleaned from poet Edouard Glissant’s “the determining gaps.” The piece ends with an emphatic bass chord. Arguably, the most evocative track is “Seven Aprils in Paris (And a Sophisticated Lady).” The piece unfolds gently as if he’s painting a lazy spring day in Paris, brightening the palette slightly when the classy lady comes into view. All is quiet as he observes from a distance. He is likely contrasting the peace of “that world” with the unrest felt by those of color. The brief “Legitime Defense” is angular and disjointed, one of the few free jazz excursions, put to an abrupt finale.

Maybe the most personal track is “From the Distance of my Freedom,” where Ortiz delivers spoken word posing questions about the place of the colonized, skin color, African identity, and what it feels like to be excluded. Some call it the feeling of being invisible. Ortiz calls it “silent exclusion.” Following the words, he moves into varying tempos and dynamics, moving ever so unpredictably, sometimes with a mere swipe of a key. The brief title track is aptly stormy, infused with repetitive motifs. “The Great Camouflage” takes the opposite tack, a dramatic series of dark chords with glimpses of treble and ample space between each. “Deuxième Miniature (Dancing)” becomes more animated, but Ortiz manages to insert dark chords and notes, giving the piece a mix of joy and angst; a tone of anxiety.

Those three pieces seem to serve as a preamble to the culminating one, “We Belong to Those Who Say No to Darkness.” Here, Ortiz uses a variety of techniques, i including dampening the strings to produce thuds and metallic strums. The piano sounds like a different instrument – a zither, oud, or possibly an electric guitar. Like “The Great Camouflage,” the piece unfolds very deliberately. The title is drawn from Cesaire’s defiant preface to the first issue of Tropiques, where he writes that although “the shadow” of imperialism seems to be encroaching in many aspects of life, still “we belong to those who say no to the shadow. We know that the salvation of the world depends on us, too.”  These are writings from practically a century ago. Consider that this week alone in the States, we had a President comment that the Smithsonian museum focused too much on slavery, and that the Texas House of Representatives passed a redistricting plan to curtail the voting rights of people of color. Colonialism has again reared its ugly head.

It would seem Ortiz has made his major statement through the prior piece. “The Haberdasher” is more melodic and brighter.  “Lo que you quiero es Chan Chan” is based on a song by Cuban artist Compay Segundo, perhaps a statement of his people finding joy in resistance, or simply an embrace of his Afro-Cuban roots. Yet, the piece just ends in a descending murmur, a statement in itself.

This is urgent music, a wakeup call that shuns the bombastic in favor of a quietly compelling peaceful protest.

‘Créole Renaissance’ will be released on August 29, 2025 on Intakt Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.

Photo credit: Luciano Rossetti