Levy DeAndrade may take a theoretically cerebral approach to his jazz compositions, but his rhythms speak to the pulses of both savants and jazz fusion laymen alike. The live recording of his seminal single, Crossover, exhibits the tour-de-sonic-synthesising-force’s distinctive demand to give yourself over to his sound fully. Along with the decline of the album format, all music is under threat of being reduced to mere background noise, there to fill an aural void. Yet DeAndrade stands defiantly in the way of the art form’s visceral extinction, piercing intravenous shots of life into his wildly expressive, ardorously zealous arrangements. Crossover meets him at his creative zenith; if he were composing in the time of the Zoot Suit riots, the carnage would have been colossal.
There’s a feral sophistication to the way DeAndrade builds his structures. His piano work feels less like accompaniment and more like an axis around which chaos organises itself, bending to his command. Crossover feels lived, reactive, and irrepressibly human, reminding anyone who has forgotten that jazz, when treated as conversation rather than composition, still has teeth sharp enough to puncture complacency.
As a pianist, composer, and applied theorist, Levy DeAndrade has long rejected the superficiality of fusion, choosing instead to metabolise genres into new organisms. From the chromatic tensions of bebop to the precision of classical form, his architecture is built to test musicians as much as listeners. With collaborators such as Dave Weckl and John Patitucci already sharing his stage, DeAndrade proves that mastery and intensity aren’t mutually exclusive. Crossover reaffirms his position as one of jazz’s most fearless contemporary architects, capable of turning pure intellect into uninhibited feeling.
Crossover is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.
– Review by Amelia Vandergast
