For those unaware, pianist, composer, and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) have just released their brand new album Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley, this past February 7th, 2025, on the Zoho Music label.

The album, recorded in tribute to the late Bley, will feature Blue Palestine (2018), the pianist’s final work commissioned for O’Farrill and the ALJO prior to her passing in 2023.

O’Farrill was nineteen years old when he was discovered by Bley, who immediately hired him to perform as part of her big band, where he remained a firm fixture from 1979-1983. Carla Bley is iconic. Truly one of the greats, said O’Farrill. Her name should be used with the same reverence and deference we use when we speak of Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus and even Chico O’Farrill.

Carla was my North Star. She showed me the three most important ingredients a composer can have: curiosity, integrity and accuracy. The curiosity to follow one’s muse no matter where it leads. The integrity to execute based on that curiosity, and the accuracy to execute that vision with command of your skill set no matter how prodigious or rudimentary it is.

The album also includes two O’Farrill original compositions: Mundoagua (pronounced moon-dwa-gua), commissioned by the Columbia School of Music to commemorate the Year of Water, and Día de Los Muertos, which was inspired by a book on the Aztec people.

Mundoagua [Arturo O’Farrill]
I. Glacial (9:24)
II. Mundoagua (5:34)
III. The Politics of Water (7:11)

Blue Palestine [Carla Bley]
Part One (8:34)
Part Two (5:34)
Part Three (8:58)
Part Four (3:22)

Día de Los Muertos [Arturo O’Farrill]
I. Flowery Death (5:39)
II. La Bruja (4:34)
III. Mambo Cadaverous (2:58)

On this fifth album together with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra for the Zoh Music label, they open the new recording opens on his own work, a three-piece set entitled Mundoagua: which begins with an aspiration yearn found driving Glacial, then brings us the playfully flirtatious title track Mundoagua, closing on the blissfully-charged, ecstatic yet at times dynamically cultured The Politics of Water.

The multiple Grammy-winning composer, bandleader and pianist then brings us his rendition of a most beautiful work by Carla Bey herself, the four-piece Blue Palestine: which opens on the fervent sophistication of Part One, the all-embracing notes and rhythms of Part Two, then we get the veritably cinematic in scope Part Three, the work rounding out on the buoyantly infectious Part Four.

Another original from O’Farrill brings the work to a close, his rather majestic three-piece Día de Los Muertos: which first presents the thrillingly emotive Flowery Death, then we get the dutifully dulcet La Bruja, the set, nay the collection rounding out on the melodious, ardently sincere Mambo Cadaverous.

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