Like Eva Figes’ enchanting 1983 novella, Light, the latest full-length release from extraordinary Argentinian pianist Nataniel Edelman harnesses 24 hours in the life of an artist and atomises it in a marvellously virtuosic breakdown of allusive tones and mottled moods.
Figes’ literary portrait of Claude Monet comes alive in her redolent descriptions of the great painter’s Giverny garden sanctum. Un Ruido de Agua is equally evocative in its impressionistic representations of the Berlin riverside studio where this absorbing, often delectably understated session was recorded last spring, capturing the ebb-and-flow of passing time in a series of Basho-like vignettes where simple gestures contain the kernels of all existence and the minutiae of seeming fripperies become near-seismic events.
Un Ruido de Agua also testifies to the burgeoning connections and shared visions of its three creators, with Edelman accompanied by his familiar co-conspirators, double-bassist Michael Formanek and alto-saxophonist Michaël Attias, two of the most important voices on the New York scene who, between them, have performed with everyone from Freddie Hubbard and Paul Motian to Anthony Braxton and Mary Halvorson.
Together this formidable triumvirate navigate six compositions (five by Edelman, another from Attias), plus four collective free-improvisations, reconnoitring far-reaching adumbral deltas ornamented by snaggle-toothed key jabs, swirling helix totems and billowing puffballs of smoky nimbus, cloistered from the regimented tyrannies of the beat, the stellar trio dappling their converging colours to convey the unique flow and momentum of a single day.

3, 4, 5, 7 & 8 by Edelman | 10 by Attias (Ravished Limbs Music, SESAC) | 1, 2 , 6 & 9 by Edelman, Attias & Formanek

Recorded May 7th 2022, by Sebastian Ohmert at Blackbird Studios, Berlin, Germany | Mixed and mastered by Mariano Míguez at Ideo Music, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Produced by Nataniel Edelman | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos | Photo by Cristina Marx/Photomusix