Chucho Valdes Opens Jazz Cycle in Havana

Havana.- Jesus (Chucho) Valdes does not understand about conventions, if it is all about music. So it was showed, in a concert the Cuban outstanding jazz piano player and composer offered at the Havana Alicia Alonso Theater Saturday.

The Cuban famous jazzist has announded he would play part of his own repertoire, but the concert went far over the expectations of the audience, since Valdes was once more the owner of the 88 keys of the piano, making of the work of jazz classics a redimensioned proposal with high quality, able to make outstanding piano players or songwriters feel jealous of him.

The concert started with the song 'In Walked Bud', that piece as a homage that great US Thelonious Monk made another jazz giant, called Bud Powell, and continued with the song 'Hojas Muertas' (Dead Leaves), a French song popularized by great French actor and singer Yves Montand in the decade of the 50's. The family monent came on with the interpretation of 'Con Poco Coco' (With a Little Coconut), one of the cornerstones of Afro-Cuban jazz, written by his father, Bebo Valdes, and a song dedicated to Caridad Amaro, his paternal grandmother, composed for the recording of documentary film 'Calle 54' (54th Street).

The homage to other jazz greats, like John Coltrane with 'Giant Steps', to Gershwin with 'Sumertime', to his native ground with Son to Quivicán, the wink to Rachmaninov, and the evocation to Chopin as the biggest of musical romanticism.

Valdés is the merger of all this music, of all these pianos, and of between them he rises, the only and colossal, although also invites, this time not to jazz performers, but to a public gratefully appluading up to the satiety.

The individual concert of the winner of six Grammy and three Latin Grammy Awards opened a cycle dedicated to jazz music, organized by the Cuban Institute of Music that also contemplates the presentations of Gonzálo Rubalcaba, Hernán López Nussa, and the Symphonic Orhestra of Venezuela.

Source: PL