Emilio Solla and La Inestable de Brooklyn: Handmade

As the power of artificial intelligence (AI) grows exponentially, it has begun to permeate even the highest expressions of our humanity. AI-generated art of many kinds—literary, visual, and musical—appears on screens large and small daily. Handmade, a gorgeous double album by New York-based Argentinian pianist and composer Emilio Solla, featuring his nonet Inestable de Brooklyn, seeks to build a bridge across this uncanny valley." Handmade is an apologia of the tactile," says GRAMMY-nominated Solla. "We are moving further away from the act of grabbing a pencil to write music, a brush to paint, a book to read. I celebrate the lives of the artists...who spend endless hours in search of their own sound by playing, blowing, and hitting. We are what we do, and what we make." What Solla does here is compose, arrange, and play a clutch of thematically coherent tunes bursting with melodic and harmonic invention. What La Inestable de Brooklyn makes of these tunes is a burnished monument to artistic ingenuity as it unfolds moment to moment.

Sara Caswell's violin and Rodolfo Zanetti's bandoneon infuse Handmade with the sound of Solla's birthplace, while the leader's piano trio and a quartet of horns create vivid orchestral jazz harmonies reminiscent of Gil Evans. The album's heart is a 22-minute, three-movement reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic entitled "Suite de Los Abrazos" (or, "A Hugging Suite"). Oddly, the three movements appear out of order and separated by distinct tunes, an organization Solla says was inspired by Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar's 1963 stream-of-consciousness work Rayuela (Hopscotch), meant to be read non-linearly.

The suite's first movement, "Milonga Mutante" opens with drummer Rogerio Boccato's nervous brushwork, across which a jumpy twelve-tone theme is passed between Alejandro Aviles' flute, Caswell's violin, and Zanetti's bandoneon before the whole band plays a series of stabbing Stravinsky-like chords followed by trombonist Mike Fahie's brilliantly conceived solo. The milonga is a term referring both to a lively dance form and a confusing situation, and in this case, its 'mutation' is meant to invoke a chaotic emergency room at the pandemic's onset. The title of the suite's second movement, "The Loss" needs little explanation, given Solla's mournful piano melody, accompanied by plangent horn chords and a moving solo by bassist Edward Perez that lightens the mood, perhaps evoking happy memories of lost loved ones. Layered percussion opens "Bodegón Caníbal," the suite's final movement, over which a rueful tune is passed between bass clarinet, saxophone, bandoneon, violin, and trumpet. Following Tim Armacost's superb tenor solo over Boccato's Latin swing and a dancing fugato section, trumpeter David Smith plays a fluid solo as the harmony brightens and the suite ends on a high note.

Two of the remaining pieces are homages. Solla was inspired to call one "Joni Mitchell" as his syncopated, jumping piano montuno reminded him of the jazz-inspired folk singer's own songs. Alejandro Aviles is featured to good effect here on alto. "Miles Tango" weds the Latin dance form to jazz harmonies reminiscent of Miles Davis' second great quintet, with lively solos by the leader and (of course) Smith on muted trumpet, sounding very much like the titular jazz giant. Caswell's violin takes the role of the bird in "Bird Song," a piece commissioned by a chamber music group based in San Antonio, Texas. Solla imagined a bird who constantly crosses the U.S.-Mexico border, blissfully unaware of the sovereign geographical distinction, and the music reflects this: it alternates between a bright, trumpet-led 'south of the border' tune and a swinging jazz bed over which the lovely violin soars. Caswell is also featured on the sweet "Para el Agua" ("For the Water"), a solo piano piece that Solla newly arranged for La Inestable de Brooklyn. The album closes with "De Viento y de Sal" ("Of Wind and Salt"), with guest vocalist Sofia Tosello singing beautifully on a slow milonga that also features an evocative bandoneon solo by Zanetti.

Rich, varied and heartfelt, Handmade could only be the work of human artists collaborating in real space and real time. In his liner note, saxophone great and recent Solla collaborator Paquito D'Rivera humorously says "I knew you wrote well, but not that well." After listening to this substantial work, everyone else will know, too.