“Raw Beans” by Ruud Voesten: A jazz meditation on longing and restraint.

"Raw Beans" is something beyond a normal jazz piece - it’s basically a spiritual reflection made audible through tone and texture.

Ruud‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌ Voesten is a drummer and composer from Rotterdam, whose music is a mixture of jazz, classical, and cinematic elements. After debuting with Ambrosia (2023), Voesten’s artistic portrayal of Dante’s Inferno, his latest release, Ambrosia II: Purgatorio, follows the divine journey with him. Recorded during the artist's residency at Il Palmerino in Florence, the single is a direct and natural formation of Italian art and nature into a solitary, sonorous realm.

"Raw Beans" is an eerie and evocative brain-talk between piano and clarinet, in which the main themes are the thirst of the heart and the desire for rescue.

Ruud accomplishes the creation of an atmosphere that is timeless but at the same time very much in suspension - the piano is very sparse and each of the notes sounds like a step in an empty monastery, while the clarinet is loaded with tender emotion, and goes along with the silence. This single is the representation of the paradoxical gluttonous souls in Dante’s circle of hell that are longing for what they cannot get hold of. This track, with its minimalist setting and slow meditative rhythm, succeeds in keeping sorrow together with peace, and it also gives a lot to the silence, which it makes very expressive.