Julieta Eugenio: Stay

Argentina-born saxophonist Julieta Eugenio takes four breaths ("Breaths" I through IV), that she calls "short, intimate moments," in her ongoing endeavors in this (mostly) trio-format album. The saxophone, bass and drums setup is one of the most intimate. Think Sonny Rollins in Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and A Night At The Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1958), a pair of uncluttered, groundbreaking, chordless outings that stand up as classics of the format.

Eugenio has proven herself marvelously adept in the trio arena, beginning with 2022's Jump (Greenleaf Music) teaming up with bassist Matt Dwonszyk and drummer Jonathan Barber to create another set of spare, soulful beauty. She reunites with them here on Stay, bringing in keyboardist Leo Genovese to play Fender Rhodes on two of her four "Breaths."

The set is structured, to an extent, around the first poem Eugenio penned in English (Spanish is her first language). The music is a journey into her innermost depths—deeply ruminative, probing explorations of the universe and her place in it, eliciting moments of spiritual enlightenment and a grand scale, toying with the potential of existence without time or space and she makes it seem as if the trio format is a fine (and for her perhaps the only) way to do this.

Speaking of the trio: two of the cuts, "Breath I" and "Breath II" become a quartet with the inclusion of Genovese on keyboards, which allows a sort of reset button effect, pushing the beauty aspect of the music up a notch and refreshing the ears for the continuing listening experience with the trio with an astral tweak.

All of the compositions are Eugenio's. The lone exception is Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady," serving as a touchstone of familiarity, sounding powerful and husky, also "outside of time," leading into "Breath IV," wrapping up the show sounding like a rebirth, the coming of spring.

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