Out of terror and the unspeakable horror of a 2023 mass shooting on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing during which 3 students were killed and five others were injured by a gunman comes light and love.
Saxist Diego Rivera went to Michigan State and hails from East Lansing. Clearly what happened moved him deeply. Out of such pain the healing has begun.
Recorded in New York just a few months after the tragedy. There’s a fine version of Herbie Hancock’s ‘The Maze.’
And turning to the originals Hirahara’s ‘Ebb and Flow’ appeared in another trio version found earlier on the same issuing label’s Noble Path (2011).
Fleshed out with added sax and benefitting from the passage of time and familiarity for the pianist of the piece it’s a treat.
Rivera himself is a tender writer and you can hear quite a few of his tunes on this recording. ‘Both-Siding’ and even more achingly ‘Frida’ appeal most in this seam of his style. The monumental album title track has a psalm-like gravity and sense of reverence sincerely conveyed.
In his late-forties of Mexican American heritage Rivera is an academic at the University of Texas’s Butler School of Music at Austin and previously held a similar role at Michigan State University. We liked, among his previous albums, his album Mestizo (2022) for its ideas most. He’s great at blending Afro and Latinjazz styles a factor you’ll quickly glean on West Circle‘s ‘Cumbia.’
Royston has a ball on ‘Fungque’. But for sheer frantic speed head to the beginning – later changing velocity playfully – go for ‘Debatable’ where all the elements of the band, a jazz feeling and more, coalesce most.
West Circle also includes a treatment of Donald Walden rarity ‘Mr. Styx’ that figured on a 1990s album called A Monk and a Mingus Among Us.
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