Recently it's become harder and harder to define the parameters of what is and isn't jazz. Even during the innovations that overtook the genre as a concept in the mid-20th century ('50-'70s) it was still possible to point to a post-bop performance or a transcendental piece from Alice Coltrane and say to the person next to you, "That's jazz." This is just not the case anymore as baseline reference points become increasingly diverse. While curatorial projects like Jazz is Dead attempt to preserve some semblance of its past, labels like International Anthem continue to press records that point towards an ever-evolving future. Still, even forward-looking jazzheads might be a little taken aback at how far things have progressed on Maria Chiara Argirò's Forest City. A pianist by training, Maria uses her familiarity with resonance and percussive melody to assemble a cosmopolis on a plateau in the sky, one where stone mixes with remnants of stormclouds, the air is wet with a cool electric charge, and the streets are illuminated by bursts of silent, ever-igniting thunder. A place where all that is solid drizzles from the canvas of your reality like wax from a lit candle to pool around you in a bounty of delights. Maria's piano playing, in a menagerie of forms, is always at the center of these songs, a lantern light that guides you through the mists of this welcoming wonderland. It is fascinating how the imposition of decaying electronic half-lives and cricket-barking drum-loops manages to enhance the core of the traditions she draws from rather than detract from them. These languid and black-rose pedal padded, soft industrial elements usher the album into a realm that is closer to post-punk or underground disco than what one might consider a congenial plot on which jazz can flourish. Ever defiant, in its own little way, Forest City demonstrates what vibrant new flora can emerge from a contemporary urban setting when heirloom seeds are nurtured with the right amount of imagination.
