Composer and arranger
Ines Velasco
showcases her deeply thoughtful and harmonically sophisticated big-band jazz on 2025's
A Flash of Cobalt Blue
. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico,
Velasco
honed her skills at Berklee in Boston before branching out on projects with
National Jazz Orchestra of México
, the
New York Philharmonic
Metropole Orkest
,
Snarky Puppy
, and others. She brings all of this experience to bear on
, collaborating with award-winning Mexican writer
Jorge Esquinca
, whose poetry book of the same name is
's inspiration. An elegy for
Esquinca
's late father, the book is a narrative biographical poem detailing a trip his family took to the Pacific Coast of Mexico in their titular "cobalt blue" Vauxhall car. It's a deeply felt work, intertwining themes of memory, loss, and geography, both physical and emotional.
draws upon all these ideas, framing
's spoken word (he reads in Spanish throughout) with her own shimmering soundscapes that evoke the traveling journey and metaphysical qualities of the poem. The album also benefits from some bold solo work by
's band, including guitarist
Jacob Aviner
, whose fusion-sounding lines fly birdlike against
Andrew Boudreau
's piano on "The Heron Crosses." Similarly, trombonist
Sam Blakeslee
burrows into the dusky nighttime tones of "This Is the Way Down," while flügelhornist
Dave Smith
and trumpeter
Bobby Spellman
spar like Brazilian capoeira dance fighters on the cloudy, multiphonic "In the Tropical Night." With
transforms
's poetry into a vibrant, often cinematic-feeling sonic experience. ~ Matt Collar