While it neither fair nor feasible to compare figures from different eras — to wit, who is the better footballer, Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi? — Argentine pianist/keyboard player Leo Genovese, not even 50, feels like a throwback to players like Wolfgang Dauner or Joachim Kühn, who were equally comfortable with free jazz, fusion, modern, world and even classical endeavors. And like those players, Genovese shuttles among various labels, with 577 his most regular home and where he can be heard at his most experimental.
Forward is Genovese's first solo date. It documents a performance from the Forward Festival (an event put on in various location by 577 Records) held in Brooklyn in 2024. The setting could be seen as putting extra pressure on Genovese but, conversely, adds the human element, an audience whose energy could be absorbed and reflected, unlike a musician alone in a studio, an engineer dimly visible through glass. It is the difference between a zoo and roaming through the forest.
With the show comprising "Part 1" and "Part 2" and the music credited to Genovese, one assumes it to be improvised. The music begins sparsely, with 15 ghostly, arrhythmic notes in its first 30 seconds. It ends with the same conceit: 19 more icy shards in the closing half-minute. This demonstrates a musician who, even in a spontaneous setting, has a prodigious memory and an architect's approach to his craft.
In between those signposts are 54 minutes of what can be best be described as a classical fantasy, sometimes mysterious and ethereal, other times fleet and spastic, and furthermore dense and ominous in other segments. Yet the proceedings maintain a flow, like someone jumping between points in their biography but still making compelling sense through masterful storytelling. There is the briefest of pauses between "Part 1" and "Part 2", useful for the purposes of the album, but when listening straight through, just a deep breath in and full exhalation out.
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