VISION, 5 STARS RECORD by Ritmo & Melómano magazines
5-star review in Ritmo magazine by Luis Suárez.
The pianist María Parra Peña has finally made the decision to present her compositions to us, in a step towards her professional development. Her specialty of minimalist music that shades in the direction of melodic pop, impressionism, jazz, jazz-flamenco, folk… Simple tonal scores, with hardly any thematic developments, that reflect sensations, memories and landscapes, giving enough contrast to avoid repetition without disturbing the basic quiet surface. In the same way that we find poems that “need” to be musicalized immediately, here we find the opposite side, musical poems that narrate without the need for text.
Presentation in a careful design and impeccable sound take. Also, Parra’s style is impeccably precise and adapts to this music in an effective way, finding a fresh and at times exciting version in a dreamy and soft project. Music evokes the poetic environment and opens intriguing possibilities for the expansion of that language to other environments, to see how music and the mind can come together. Her compositional style is so beautiful that it makes us realize that she does not need to be flashy in unnecessary virtuosity. Her sound works so well and she seems so natural because she’s not trying to be overtly experimental. She just lets us dream, valuing thoughtful and subtly expressive music.
5-star review in Melómano magazine by Alessandro Pierozzi.
Wind, water lilies, Jupiter, glances, sunrise, Alhambra… Cardinal points of our lives that, perhaps, we stop valuing as intrinsic or as fleeting symbols of our imagination, but which undoubtedly hide whispers of emotions and visions, sometimes timid, in others, out of control. Because this is the wonderful and surprising album Vision (Warner Music Spain) by María Parra: a coming and going through those realities and their many meanings. Wonderful because it is impeccably played and produced. Surprising because this «pianist versus composer» reflects in her staves a very personal revision of the piano language in which all the musical baggage that she has accumulated (classics, flamenco or jazz) is summarized, honestly adapting it to her instinct, to her transparent poetic soul because yes, because it is in what she believes and in what she has found her creative and expressive freedom, although without stopping to look askance through her vital rear-view mirror. Her luminous fingers that, under the guise of Wind Travellers, enter a musical spiral that turns and turns like our childhoods on a Carousel and seeks their destiny in a kingdom of Celtic reminiscences like Avalon or in the freshness of a ceiling (Aerial View) or, perhaps, in the depths of a mysterious ocean (Deep Ocean); to those Nenúfares bis (Water Lilies) encore that rest carelessly in the shade of Debussy scent notes; those Venus and Jupiter who attract each other in a minor key and fall in love fleetingly in a major key —one of the highlights of the album with a clear cinematic flavor—; to those flamenco twists of Looking South, that orange Nasrid Sunset or that Graná with its imposing polychrome Alhambra which it pays tribute to with sonorous brushstrokes full of meaning, while the silver night falls over the Sacromonte. María Parra throws herself into all this with her art, her sensitivity… her piano. Combined arpeggios, strong chords, rhythmic cells with airs of fusion, melodic «alhambrismo», great balance in dynamics… Real dream or dream reality? No, just Vision.
