Mayra Domine / Rodrigo Gonzalez: Almas Inquietas

Maybe it is the new math curriculum, but there are a lot of freely discussed equations and logistics bandied about within the music of Almas Inquietas, a piano/drums music that is so much more than piano/drums. It is an impossible-to-turn-away-from music, tapping into the imagination and creating scenarios that were not there before, here now.

More than a duet of Argentinian pianist/composer Mayra Dómine, whose style and willingness to create new borders between elegantly articulate light classical and rock's more jagged beachheads, and drummer/composer Rodrigo Gonzalez, a vital percussionist with a penchant for the same, Almas Inquietas, (or, translated into our less poetic tongue, Restless Souls) is a nervy gambit.

That is not to imply that anything heard on Almas Inquietas is underhanded. But it is a cunning sleight of hand; a wily subterfuge of the many musics we all have at our want when the times warrant a need to connect to something larger than wifi or an algorithm that bears no truth at all. Nor can it be as honest as the sweeping grace of "Telepatía." Sculpted from a circular, full-bodied melody that Dómine plays to the hilt and González holds to task, it is more than a perfectly somber yet triumphant closing track. It is also the culmination of all the fineness that came before it.

For starters, González's title track starts it all. A muscularly winsome voyage, Dómine doubles and triples back, her sharp concepts fully in focus while González runs the pace, thus making "Almas Inquietas" something from the piano/drum lineage never heard before, with an elusive flamenco twist. The drummer's second inversion, "Los Equilibristas" ("The Tightrope Walkers") pulls the rope tight, takes away the net, and leaves Dómine flying through the air in real time, taking command of the warm, uplifting currents.

Dómine's jumpy nocturne "Verdad Oculta" ("Hidden Truth")—part Carnegie Hall recital, part crash course in CBGB's vibe—changes its course often enough to keep one wondering. "Historias Invisibles" with guest Arno Stepanyan on the double-reeded, mournfully textured dudúk, sounds like a moody wander through our collective and individual invisible histories. Ditto "Universos Paralelos" where the duo shares its existential threats and humors, caressing the human construct with a verve all its own. Which, in a nutshell, can be said for the whole of Almas Inquietas.

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