Flying Toward the Sound Motema***

Geri Allen composed the music for this eight-part solo piano suite to acknowledge the inspiration of three jazz piano masters (McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Cecil Taylor) on her own music. As the suite's generic title, Refractions, suggests, her mentors' illuminating influence is expressed through the prism of her own imagination and virtuosity, becoming, to mix metaphors, a dance towards artistic and spiritual revelation. The CD's three short film extracts, made with film-maker and performance artist Carrie Mae Weems, support the dance metaphor. Divorced from images, though, the music is a formidably sustained exploration of the piano's orchestral resources, both structured and freely improvised. It's discursive but focused, full of momentum – and just a bit relentless. The non-suite closer, Your Pure Self (Mother to Son), is an altogether more shaded thing. See motema.com