NEW Album „Serranías: Sketchbook for piano trio“
will be out on March 17th 2023 on Intakt Records

„Serranías: Sketchbook for piano trio“ is a special album on account of two milestones: the 20th anniversary of Aruán Ortiz's discographic début as a vanguard musician in the United States and his turning 50. This
pianist-composer from Santiago de Cuba has become an indisputable protagonist in the panorama of New York avant-garde jazz, thanks to the creative abstract-cubist heterogeneity of his compositions, with their uncommon Afro-Cuban/Haitian accents. Although he was formed in the same musical context as Cuban colleagues of recent generations who have emigrated to the US, his mosaic work-in-progress does not resemble anyone else's. Ortiz is a “cubist” of the pentagram who presents a musical entity hiding its real subject, as he designs rugged tales on the keys, using conceptual hybrids of a Cuban form of "new thing." (From the liner notes by Gian Franco Grilli)

The music of Aruán Ortiz on his upcoming album (...) will be a celebration of his 50th birthday, summarizing the musical influences that have shaped Aruán's artistic vision and deepened his personal approach as a performer and composer since he left his hometown, Santiago de Cuba, in 1996.

Conceived as an ode to self with an eye to the future, this album will draw on his integration of Afro-Haitian traditions of Cuba with avant-garde and progressive jazz, serial music, and contemporary classical language in his compositions; as well as translating non-musical contexts such as architectural patterns, finding inspirations from other artistic expressions like Cubism and Pointillism practice, and Afro-Futurism.

Aruán's ability to understand compositions as living entities, constantly mutating, permuting, and reshaping themselves, allows him to constantly integrate elements of the jazz tradition, along with his own Afro-Cuban rhythmic heritage, contemporary and serial music, resulting in a melting pot of styles and influences. Matthew Fiander from PopMatters described his music as “a solid and unique new sound in today’s jazz world;" Derek Taylor from Dusted Magazine said Aruán's music "illustrates that alchemy at length in a dizzying display of technique, energy and stylistic legerdemain that regularly leaves ears and brain scrambling to keep up and absorb the abundant details of the extended itinerary as it blazes by;" and -Lynn René Bayley from The Art Music Lounge opined, "completely hypnotic, drawing the listener deep into the workings of the trio’s musical mind."

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY: Aruán Ortiz (piano)
Named “one of the most creative and original composers in the world” (Lynn René Bailey, The Art Music Lounge), pianist, violist, and composer Aruán Ortiz—born in Santiago de Cuba, and resident of Brooklyn, NY—has been an active figure in the progressive jazz and avant-garde scene in the US for more than 15 years. Recently, Aruán has channeled his sound through avant-garde and progressive jazz, serial music, and the contemporary classical composing idiom, and his work has been informed by an array of subjects, reflecting his eclectic musical identity. His trio effort, "Hidden Voices" (Intakt Records, 2016), was inspired by architectural patterns and information drawn from non-musical contexts; his solo album, "Cub(an)ism" (Intakt Records, 2017), was given five starts by the prestigious Downbeat magazine, and was described as "a genius exercise in the exploration of depth and perception that reveals a bright new wrinkle in the relationship between music and mathematics, reimagining Afro-Haitian Gaga rhythms, Afro-Cuban rumba
and Yambú into heavily improvised meditations on modernism that recall John Cage and Paul Bley” (Ron Hart, The Observer).