Francisco Mela featuring Matthew Shipp and William Parker: Music Frees Our Souls Vol. 1

Music Frees Our Souls furthers Cuban drummer Francisco Mela's ongoing ventures in freely improvised surroundings. Already well-established with heavyweight leaders such as McCoy Tyner, Joe Lovano and Esperanza Spalding, as well as a series of dates under his own name, Mela has now enlisted pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker, two of the best in this particular business, in his quest for spontaneous magic.

When joining such a long-lasting partnership, (Parker and Shipp first hooked up in the early '80s and have combined regularly ever since) there is always the question of whether to follow or to lead. As it happens, Mela does both on this studio session in which two long-form collectives sandwich a shorter third.

Mela's vocal invocation at the start of the CD encourages a full tilt launch, all guns blazing, into "Light Of Mind," with the drummer setting the tempo through an airy cymbal chatter which carefully avoids obscuring the bottom end. Shipp draws on elements of his customary toolkit—thunderous depth charges, scintillating runs and urgent recurring figures—to enliven the flow, while Parker weaves resonant robust patterns around the pulse. But they cannot keep up this pace, and gradually the momentum shifts to wider open spaces, where Shipp and Parker share incisive angular exchanges, this time with Mela shadowing.

That same sense of measured dialogue also pervades "Dark Light," which is illuminated by Parker's calming series of rippling strums repeated in various registers. But it is Mela who shines on the final "Infinite Consciousness," starting the piece alone in a barrage of simultaneous lines, and then taking another unaccompanied break part way through where his choppy free groove recalls Hamid Drake in his pomp. That is the prompt for Parker and Shipp to join in loose syncopation for one of the highlights of the album, which whets the appetite for more from this empathetic trio.

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