Juanma Trujillo - Contour (2023)

Venezuelan guitarist and composer Juanma Trujillo has been an active member of the international jazz and improvised music scene playing in groups with artists such as Francisco Mela, Ras Moshe, William Parker, Billy Martin, Mimi Jones, Ra Kalam Bob Moses and Arturo O’Farrill among others. Trujillo has developed a personal playing style that embraces many musical lineages from jazz, rock and Latin American music to improvised music and noise, he continually strives to innovate amongst his contemporaries while also incorporating the mastery of his predecessors into his forward-leaning artistic explorations.
A prolific bandleader, Contour marks the fourth release from Trujillo. A splendid trio date with bassist Kenneth Jimenez and master drummer Gerald Cleaver. The recording documents the ensemble’s very first meeting in the studio with no prior rehearsal or discussion and captures the exhilarating feeling of these musicians getting to know themselves in real time. “It worked out like an informal session, I brought a couple of very simple and open musical sketches to play along with a few improvised pieces” Trujillo explains.
Cleaver and Jimenez prove to be sympathetic bandmates, capable of generating great intensity as well as nuanced and subdued events of enigmatic beauty. “I’ve listened to Kenneth and Gerald a lot and it was such a thrill to be playing and hear that remarkable quality that I associate with them, where every conceivable direction is fair game” says the bandleader. And that kind of unified diversity is perhaps the strongest characteristic of the recording, a rewarding sonic journey through moments of buoyant rhythm, open space, explosive chaos and textural depth that reveals new elements with each listen.