| Jazz moderne |
It would be easy to overlook this album in a year already crowded with releases competing for attention. It does not announce itself with obvious hooks or an easily digestible concept. And yet, precisely in its refusal to conform, it demands to be taken seriously. Conceivable Directions is the work of Enrike Haneine, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and thinker whose career defies neat categorization. What he has created here is not a conventional record, but an abstract sonic sculpture, a collection of ideas that are at once cerebral and emotional, anchored and elusive.
Haneine’s résumé alone reads like a map of modern Latin and global popular music. A musical producer for Televisa, he has shaped the soundtracks of television and popular entertainment. As a director, arranger, and collaborator with stars such as Ricky Martin, Sasha, María del Sol, Chantal, and Muñecos de Papel, he has navigated the high-pressure world of commercial music at its most visible level. His tours have taken him across Mexico, Central and South America, and the United States, placing him in the shifting currents of multiple musical industries. That he has managed not only to survive but to develop his own voice in such an environment is remarkable; that he has chosen to pursue an album as uncompromising as this one is even more so.
If one takes the time to read Haneine’s biography in full, it becomes clear that any attempt to “place” him is bound to fail. His artistic vocabulary stretches across jazz, contemporary classical composition, improvised music, and world traditions. There are echoes of rigorous avant-garde writing here, but also the spontaneity of improvisation and the openness of folk traditions. His brass arrangements, in particular, bear the unmistakable stamp of Mexican music, where horns are not simply orchestral colors but voices of urgency, street energy, and communal expression.
This refusal to belong entirely to one school is no accident. Haneine, of Lebanese descent and born in Mexico City, embodies cultural plurality. His heritage alone would suggest a collision of identities; his music fulfills that promise. In Conceivable Directions, the listener is asked to abandon categories, to enter into a sound-world where influences flash by quickly, where cultural intent hides in the contour of a phrase or the offbeat accent of a rhythm. Listening becomes less a matter of recognition than of navigation, following a compass whose directions are not fixed but constantly shifting.
The list of collaborators with whom Haneine has shared the stage reads like a chronicle of late 20th- and early 21st-century jazz and beyond: Joe Hunt, Joe Lovano, Jon Faddis, Wynton Marsalis, Mark Feldman, NEA Jazz Master Candido Camero, Rubén Blades, Dave Valentín, Grammy-nominated percussionist Bobby Sanabria, Sheila E, Harvie S, Ingrid Jensen, Hugh Fraser, Phil Nimmons, Dave Pietro, Dave Schroeder, Mark Shim, Tyshawn Sorey, Christophe Schweizer, Eliot Zigmund, Vince Cherico, Bruce Gertz, Vic Juris, Larry Harlow, Jeff Lederer, Chembo Corniel, Orlando Marín, Ray Vega, John Benítez, Rubén Rodríguez, Richie Morales, Rafael Cruz, Antonio Sánchez. The roll call is long, yet instructive: it suggests a musician trusted by peers across an astonishing range of traditions, a chameleon whose adaptability is rooted not in compromise but in genuine curiosity.
But perhaps the most striking quality of Conceivable Directions is its demand on the listener. This is not music that allows you to sit back passively. It asks for your participation. At times, the experience can feel exhausting, particularly for those who carry with them the restlessness of travel or the memory of cultural dislocation. The structures shift unexpectedly; the narrative is fragmented. Yet within that fragmentation lies coherence, a story told in shards rather than in linear chapters. In this sense, Haneine is less a performer than a dramatist, a figure who treats the recording studio like a stage on which sound itself becomes character, conflict, and resolution.
There is, too, the matter of his education. Haneine holds four academic degrees, a fact that might suggest a tendency toward the overly intellectual. But to mistake this album for academic exercise would be wrong. His formal training provides a framework, but the music breathes with lived experience: with the joy of giving back, with the courage of constant reinvention, with the willingness to risk opacity in the pursuit of authenticity. Where many musicians seek clarity, Haneine often chooses ambiguity; where others prize accessibility, he offers density. Yet behind these choices there is never arrogance, only an invitation to listen harder, to meet the music halfway.
For some, the invitation will be declined. Listeners who demand only familiar jazz archetypes may find themselves frustrated, left behind on the side of the road. But for those who are willing to engage, to surrender preconceptions and to treat listening as collaboration, the rewards are profound. Conceivable Directions enriches not only the understanding of Haneine as an artist but also the very notion of what music can be when freed from boundaries.
What emerges most forcefully, finally, is not just virtuosity or innovation, but love. Love of life, love of music, love of the cultures that shaped him, love of the search itself. In an era where many recordings feel designed for streaming playlists and short attention spans, Haneine offers something far more ambitious: a record that resists the obvious, that rewards patience, and that ultimately insists on music as an act of art, not just entertainment.
This is not an easy album, nor does it want to be. But it is an important one.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, August 17th 2025
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To buy this album (September 5, 2025)
Musicians:
Thomas Herberer, Trumpet
Kik Knuffke, cornet
Christof Kniche, bass clarinet
Jay Anderson, acoustic Bass
Enrique Naneine, drums, tambourine
Tracklisting:
Inconceivable Truth
New Notion
Flour Ahead
Unique Array Of Swirls
Perpetual Insights
Thirteen Level Indifference
Sparkles Dimensions
Irrelevant Own Design
Never Stranded
Tended
Without a Single Word
Very Slick
Nuances Of Intuition