The second album from Canadian-born pianist
Cat Toren and her Human Kind ensemble, 2020's
Scintillating Beauty, showcases the group's deeply meditative and enveloping jazz sound. The album follows 2017's
Cat Toren's Human Kind and again features
Toren alongside saxophonist
Xavier Del Castillo, oud player
Yoshie Fruchter, bassist
Jake Leckie, and drummer
Matt Honor. A native of Vancouver,
Toren first garnered acclaim as a member of the inventive Juno Award-winning instrumental ensemble
Pugs & Crows. Based in Brooklyn since 2010,
Toren is an adept post-bop musician who studied with revered players like
Andy LaVerne and
Sophia Rosoff. However, with
Human Kind, she has a specific sound in mind, drawing her influences from artists like
Pharoah Sanders,
McCoy Tyner,
Alice Coltrane, and other performers who helped shape the sound of avant-garde astral and spiritual jazz of the late '60s. These are passionate, flowing songs, at turns gorgeously hypnotic and emotionally unsettling. While
Toren's sparkling piano is at the core of the group's sound, she gives equal time to her bandmates;
Del Castillo's keening sax lines and
Fruchter's wiry Middle Eastern oud accents are prominent aspects of the group's overall sound. Tracks like the opening "Radiance in Veils" and the languid "Garment of Destiny" start delicately with a shimmer of piano and oud and slowly build into a cacophonous frenzy. That said, they can also swing, as they do on the midtempo "Ignis Fatuus," where
Toren's thick chords are buoyed by her rhythm section's warm groove until
Del Castillo cuts across their bow spitting fiery tone spirals. More ruminative is the closing "Rising Phoenix" in which
Toren plays a humming keyboard melody as
Fruchter's oud makes way for a dusting of woody rattles, bells, and other percussion. With
Scintillating Beauty,
Toren has crafted an album that washes over you like a slow-moving tidal wave crushing and scattering everything in its path before receding into the ocean. ~ Matt Collar
![Pharoah [Expanded Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0680899800822_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Pharoah [Expanded Edition]")
![Waltz for Debby [1962]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0888072323261_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Waltz for Debby [1962]")
