Leo Genovese: Forward

Even after who-knows-how-many-years and who-knows-how-many-piano players, it is still outright amazing how each player approaches his/her instrument. Each has their own history, memory and/or love affair that somehow needs telling.

Recorded in 2024 at the New York Forward Festival in Brooklyn, Grammy winning ("Best Improvised Jazz Solo," 2023) pianist Leo Genovese—his passions on his sleeve—takes his bench. He begins as many do: on a dreamy hunt and peck. A note here, a note there, looking for the elusive pacing of the tale about to unfold.

And then it does and that is when Forward, Genovese's first solo release for 577, unravels a journey through a strange world of harmonic volatility and tidal forces, a one man sortie into the free and unknown. "Part 1" and "Part 2," what else does a story need?

That never has been part of Genovese's game. Whether he onstage with the likes of Esperanza Spalding, Wayne Shorter and The Mars Volta or downtown mapping the cosmos with Daniel Carter, Genovese is not seated at his holy instrument to be anyone but himself. His tone is sharp, his conjectures angular. His mode of composition is headstrong, combative, assuring. He cuts across today's fast moving crypto- currents by hearing its incessant music then melding it with his. The pianist equates it to moving air.

At this gig in Brooklyn the air around the piano is electron charged so anything goes. Cacophony. Meditation. Each with its own core, a core Genovese never shies away from diving into. Turbulence. Tranquillity. Each within the pianist's all-encompassing grasp. Post modern avant bop. Forward may not be the be-all and end-all but it is a work of one man's art. What work of art have we contributed to the day?

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