Bodurov Trio: Senkya Padna

Following the intimate Solo In Bonn (Opto Music, 2019) and Coalescence (Opto Music, 2020)—a duo album with electronics producer Ivan Shopov—pianist Dimitar Bodurov returns to the bread and butter of his trio with Senkya Padna. Flanked by long-standing collaborators Jens Dueppe on drums and Mihail Ivanov on bass, Bodurov once more draws on Bulgarian folk music as the launching pad for his own brand of contemporary jazz, one which relegates swing and the blues in favor of more personal rhythms and emotional frames.

Bodurov knows all too well, however, that the provenance of folk music is often hazy, particularly in a region such as the Balkans with its long history of shifting borders and waves of migrations shaped by wars and nation building. To that end, the neat bookends of the turbulent, rhythmically fractious "Seynka Pradna" and the lyrical "Moma," based on ancient folk songs—and featuring, respectively, the voices of Purva Barenkova and Sibina Radenkova—can perhaps be seen as acknowledgments of his debt to tradition.

Fragments of folkloric melodies, real or imagined, pepper Bodurov's play, though his style is equally defined by a choppy rhythmic gait, modulating motifs and flashing glissandi. All these traits come together in thrilling fashion on energetic numbers such as "Opinions" and "Delba," where the trio's tightly interwoven choreography is at its most dynamic. The discipline allows for freedoms which all three musicians exploit, resulting in dialogue which never sounds formulaic. Dueppe, who has been drumming with Bodurov since the early 2000s, is a driving force, his distinctive language replete with textural nuances.

At times, darker undertones color the music, notably on the somber "Savages" with its eerie pulses and tense crescendos, perhaps the inevitable result of music written during the pandemic. But there is a lighter side to the trio's play, particularly on the aptly titled "O Dance" with its infectious folk melodies and cajoling rhythms, and on the reflective, brushes-steered "Devoiko," a deeply lyrical exposition—though not without its fire—which is perhaps the album's standout track.

A fascinating, richly-layered journey which links the past with the contemporary through the prism of Dimitar Bodurov's ever-fertile creativity.