Luis Vicente Trio: Chanting In The Name Of

All-world jazz man, world music maker and fierce improvisational drummer Hamid Drake penned venerating liners for this album led by the always in demand Portuguese trumpeter Luis Vicente and his trio. And Drake's correlations with estimable Sufi mystic and teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan's view that music is life, and a means of discovery that parallels the harmony of the entire universe among relationships with nature and other pleasurable perceptions is spot on. Hence, the trio attains a symbiosis, rooted in the free zone along with understated melodies, intricately executed maneuvers and bold outbreaks amid a flock of broadly envisioned spatial characteristics to complement heartfelt moments and vigorous interplay.

The band's resilience is evident throughout via slap dab type movements fraught with emotive sensibilities and the customary give and take, coupled with structured unison runs and the leader's ravaging solo spots. At times they float, stagger, and toss daggers at the studio walls. And they interrogate their respective souls on "Chanting In The Name Of," highlighted by Vicente's sultry lines, tinted with a bit of edginess or trepidation, which is a factor that can allude to something spiritual during a perilous journey, magnified by drummer and solo artist, Pedro Melo Alves' hovering cymbal swashes and rumbling percussion grooves. Here, bassist Gonçalo Almeida's austere elongated arco phrasings serve as a launching pad for the group to open it up along with the leader's extended techniques that place the music in the eye of a hurricane. Yet, as anticipated, the trumpeter lowers the intensity with an attractive melodic interval.

The final track "May's Flavour" features Vicente's congenial notes, prodded by the bassist's nimble plucking that acts like a moveable time stamp atop the drummer's peppery output using brushes. But Vicente doesn't remain in a mild-mannered disposition for long as his creamy upper-register squeals generate a foreboding storyline, as if trouble is in the air to round out this multi-purposed program that can elicit a lights-out kind of vibe, or an aura of hitting the redline in a V8 muscle car. In sum, they provide a holistic listening experience that alludes to the power of entertainment.

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