Prospect

Ukrainian composers Nikolai Kapustin, who died in 2020, wrote piano pieces that revived old-school titles like “Etudes” and “Preludes”, which he injected with the jitterbug of stride piano, boogie-woogie and funk grooves. The act of writing jazz-sources rhythms down can kill their feel stone dead, but pianist Ophelia Gordon’s rolling left hand and rhythmic aplomb makes Kapustin’s pieces snap into life. “Big Band Sounds” feels like a collage of asides from Gershwin songs the swingtastic “Paraphrase on Dizzy Gillespie’s Manteca” had me dancing round my speakers. A delight.

—Phillip Clark