He is Lithuanian by birth, a pianist and composer, and has settled in Boston to pursue his career. Even if we don’t spontaneously associate Boston with a jazz hub, Domas Žeromskas has clearly found a stimulating scene there, where he deploys a solid, masterful post-bop jazz. Meditations on Providence and Perseverance, Vol.1 is the recorded proof. Over the course of the seven or so full-length tracks on the album, Žeromskas sprinkles his harmonically fairly classic post-bop with some very pretty Caribbean colours (steel pan!), giving the whole an optimistic luminosity. Žeromskas indulges in some pretty rich arrangements, in which, in addition to the occasional steel pan and the basic drums and double bass, we find alto, tenor and soprano, trumpet and flugelhorn, clarinet and violin. Not all at the same time, which enhances the Bostonian’s compositions by bringing a welcome dose of colourful variations to a conventional harmonic base. It’s a beautiful repertoire that we’d love to hear somewhere here in Montreal (Upstairs or Dièse Onze). That being said, he was at the Montreal Jazz Fest in 2023 with Jacques Schwarz-Bart and Malika Tirolien, in a completely different proposal.
