The Coral Gables Quintet

The music of Miami has long been associated with the fast, neon-lit electronic beats of South Beach or the high-energy horns of Little Havana. However, on *Swamp-Glow*, the elegant and quietly stunning new album from The Coral Gables Quintet, the city is given a much older, darker, and more humid sound. Led by the brilliant, Cuban-born trumpeter Emilio Ruiz, the quintet uses a blend of classic cool jazz and traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms to evoke the shadowed, banyan-draped avenues of Coral Gables at twilight. The resulting tracks are long, atmospheric excursions that feel like walking through a private garden while the sea breeze moves the heavy palm fronds.

The album’s center of gravity is "Banyan Shade," an eleven-minute instrumental track that highlights Ruiz’s exquisite, muted trumpet work. Ruiz plays with a soft, round tone that seems to hang in the air like humidity, supported by the spare, elegant piano chords of Clara Suarez and a low, rolling double-bass line that suggests the movement of deep water. The track is built on a slow crescendo that never quite boils over, maintaining a beautiful, tension-filled restraint that mimics the heat of a South Florida summer evening. It is jazz of a highly painterly order, creating rich, saturated soundscapes that are both sophisticated and deeply atmospheric.

In its final tracks, the album takes a more melancholy turn, reflecting on the precarity of the city's relationship with the sea. On "The Rising Tide," Suarez’s piano playing takes on a watery, liquid quality, with cascading notes that fall like rain over Ruiz’s mournful, sustained horn lines. It is a gorgeous, deeply mature recording that offers a sophisticated alternative to the louder, more commercial sounds of modern Miami. *Swamp-Glow* is a beautiful love letter to the city's quiet, historic corners, capturing the elegant, moss-draped beauty of a place that is always dreaming of its past.