So listen closely to Pastor’s Paradox. It speaks, improvises, and melodizes our times too, with Ortiz’s rampant keys, the bowed ground-work of Dhar and St Louis, Aklaff’s finessing drums, and Byron’s curlicuing notes adding their lucid messages.

Pianist Aruán Ortiz practices contemporary jazz where he mixes different references creatively. In 2023, he released the album “Serranias – Sketchbook for Piano Trio” (Intakt), and is preparing to release, via Clean Feed, “Pastor’s Paradox”. On the occasion of his visit to Coimbra, we spoke with the pianist: an exclusive interview where Ortiz tells us about his influences, his career, and his music.

A very original pianist, Aruán Ortiz practices contemporary jazz where he mixes different references creatively. Under his name, Ortiz has built an increasingly solid discography: “Hidden Voices” (2016), with Eric Revis and Gerald Cleaver; “Cub(an)is” (2017), solo piano; “Live In Zurich” (2018), with Brad Jones and Chad Taylor; “Random Dances and (A)tonalities” (2018), with Don Byron; “Inside Rhythmic Falls” (2020), with Andrew Cyrille and Mauricio Herrera. 2023 was a memorable year for the Cuban-born pianist: in March he published “Serranias – Sketchbook for Piano Trio” (Intakt) and in August he published “Prophecy”, a trio recording with Ivo Perelman and Lester St. Louis. On his most recent album, “Pastor's Paradox” (released by the Portuguese Clean Feed), Aruán Ortiz sought inspiration from Martin Luther King Jr. and is excellently accompanied by musicians such as Don Byron, Pheeroan akLaff and Lester St. Louis, who realized a original music with absolute brilliance. In April last year, the pianist showcased his vibrant pianism in an extraordinary concert at the Convento de São Francisco, in Coimbra.

So listen closely to Pastor’s Paradox. It speaks, improvises, and melodizes our times too, with Ortiz’s rampant keys, the bowed ground-work of Dhar and St Louis, Aklaff’s finessing drums, and Byron’s curlicuing notes adding their own lucid messages. –Chris Searle, Morning Star–

On this project, as a pianist, violist, and composer, Aruán Ortiz has created a 21st-century chamber music/jazz work that celebrates the power of music to represent the enduring influence of history... to offer us hope for a better future and musical prayers for a more peaceful world. –Dee Dee McNeil, Musical Memoirs–

Acclaimed pianist and composer Aruán Ortiz will conduct a Masterclass about Composition and Improvisation titled "Deconstructing Composition to Build your Creative Process at MUK University in Viena, on Friday, February 23rd, 2024.

The Cuban pianist, violist, and composer Aruán Ortiz, who lives in New York and Barcelona, will be a guest with the Barbara Bruckmüller Jazz Orchestra in February 2024 for a seven-day residency. Aruán has been active in the New York progressive jazz and avant-garde scenes in the United States for more than 20 years. His music spans a range of musical styles and has been interpreted by contemporary classical and jazz ensembles, dance companies, and in feature films and multimedia works. A conceptualist and music researcher, Aruán's music consolidates his Afro-Cuban and Haitian heritage with avant-garde and progressive jazz and contemporary classical language.

By actively throwing overboard melodic, structural, and harmonic hooks that have become expressively blunted from overuse, he builds from what might – or might not – be left. This instinctive radicalism might make Mr Ortiz a source of endless controversy in many corners of the musical world. But Mr Ortiz is not in the business of audience-ingratiating beauty typical of commercial music. He aims to silence the mind just enough to make room for new pathways of perception.

He creates music in which nothing – no subplot in the narrative; no emotion of the characters or reaction to both those aspects can be omitted, not a single turn of the melody, not even a single modulation. It requires the strictest attention to every detail of expression, a fine – but not over-refined – execution of each intonation. And so, when he plays – and exhorts his performing partners to play – you can be sure that there is a real sense that responses come from deep within the music’s substance.

Music Feature: The Best Jazz Albums and Live Shows of 2023

Latin:

1. Miguel Zenon and Luis Perdomo, El Arte del Bolero Volume 2

2. Aruon Ortiz, Serranias

With his small cast of exquisitely creative musicians, Ortiz makes this crucial point in satisfying musical terms.

With Pastor's Paradox, Aruán Ortiz shows that he is in his full artistic maturity.

With Pastor’s Paradox, Ortiz has created a 21st-century chamber jazz work that brilliantly and seamlessly connects the past, present, and future, honoring Dr. King’s astonishing gifts of oratory and the contributions and sacrifices made by him and scores of other civil rights advocates. Magnificently crafted, it’s a searing work of art and yet another important addition to Ortiz’s growing oeuvre. —John Murph—

“That fine Cuban‑born violist-composer Aruán Ortiz then presented Piedras de ida y vuelta (Stones back and forth), three movements of plucking and strumming with a leitmotif of piano in between each section.
Like the entire Ensemble Ipse’s work, conductor Matt Ward made every fragmentary note alive and trembling.” [Piedras (de Ida y Vuelta)] “was the music of a master craftsman”. -Harry Rolnick.

“We do not hear conversations like this anymore. We just hear chaos and criminality. Decline and default. Purge and parchment. Sure, these three argue at times (and at times at length) but there is a basic understanding, a foregone conclusion, that to get to where we are going we all have to work together, and that means communicating with each. And that means Prophecy”. -Mike Jurkovic, All about Jazz

An exhilirating electroacoustic duo collaboration between composer Joan Arnau Pamies (SP) on live electronics and electric bass and improviser, composer and conceptualist Aruán Ortiz on piano, prepared piano and percussion Des de la Profunditat, focused on raising awareness to the impact of global warming using music, light and image as the central conduit to embark the audience in a unique journey.

Aruán Ortiz presents his Solo piano program Cub(an)ism at LilyPad Gallery in Cambridge, MA.

Piedras (de Ida y Vuelta) the chamber music new work for fl/cl/perc/pno/vln/vla/vlc written by Aruán Ortiz, commissioned by Ensemble Ipse, will be premiered at The Dimenna Center for Classical Music -Norman S. Benzaquel Hall- on June 29th at 7:30PM

Aruán Ortiz featured at The New York City Jazz Record Magazine