Winner of six Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, the Cuban pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Chucho Valdés has been a key figure in the evolution of Afro-Cuban jazz for the past 50 years. In 1972, Chucho released his fourth album, a trio recording with bass and batá drums entitled simply, Jazz Batá. This ten-song exploration of the descarga roots of Cuban jazz was a departure from his early quintet recordings. Blending jazz with traditional rhythms of the sacred batá, the music showcased Chucho’s virtuosity and formed the stylistic foundation of what would become Chucho’s history-making group, Irakere. Decades later, Chucho returns to the Jazz Batá sound, joined by bassist Yelsy Heredia, plus percussionists Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé and Yaroldy Abreu Robles in a journey to discover modern interpretations of classic forms.
Chucho’s musical education includes formal studies and countless nights on the best stages in Cuba as the pianist with his father, Bebo Valdés, and his orchestra Sabor de Cuba, and also the seminal Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. In the early 70s, Chucho distilled his experiences into the foundation of Irakere, an ensemble that marked a before and after in Afro-Cuban jazz. Chucho was the director, pianist, main composer and arranger of Irakere for more than 30 years. But since 2005, he has focused on his personal career, highlighting his work as a pianist and leading small ensembles. Now in his mid-70s, Chucho’s technique and creative output are as prodigious as ever. Border-Free finds Chucho at the top of his game, leading the Afro-Cuban Messengers, a spectacular quintet comprised of brilliant young Cuban musicians. In conjunction with the their anniversary tour in 2015, Chucho released the Grammy Award winning album, Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac (Jazz Village/Harmonia Mundi).
May 1st 2018 Get Info / Tickets
New York, NY USA
Blue Note NYC
Chucho Valdés Quartet
featuring Special Guests
May 2nd 2018 Get Info / Tickets
New York, NY USA
Blue Note NYC
Chucho Valdés Quartet
featuring Special Guests
May 3rd 2018 Get Info / Tickets
New York, NY USA
Blue Note NYC
Chucho Valdés Quartet
featuring Special Guests
May 4th 2018 Get Info / Tickets
New York, NY USA
Blue Note NYC
Chucho Valdés Quartet
featuring Special Guests
May 5th 2018 Get Info / Tickets
New York, NY USA
Blue Note NYC
Chucho Valdés Quartet
featuring Special Guests
May 6th 2018 Get Info / Tickets
New York, NY USA
Blue Note NYC
Chucho Valdés Quartet
featuring Special Guests
Jun 15th 2018 Get Info / Tickets
Washington, DC USA
The John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts
Feb 8th 2019 Get Info / Tickets
Houston, TX USA
Lillie and Roy Cullen Theater
Chucho Valdés – Jazz Batá
HI-RES IMAGES
^ Photo Credit: Alejandro Perez
VIDEO
YouTube Channel
Symphonic (Embed/Download)
Tango (Embed/Download)
Irakere 40 – Estival Jazz Lugano (Embed/Download)
BIOGRAPHY/PROGRAM NOTES
Biography: Download (doc)
Biography (Spanish): Download (doc)
Jazz Batá Program Notes: Download (doc) Note: please check lineup with IMN Marketing before going to print
Official Website: www.valdeschucho.com
Label Comanche Music
CURRENT RELEASE
Tribute to Irakere – Live in Marciac (October 20, 2015)
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From The Philadelphia Tribune Chucho Valdes brings Afro-Cuban rhythms to Annenberg By: Rita Charleston Known the world over as a musical giant, the Afro-Cuban musician combines his fascinating blend of African, South American, Cuban and Spanish musical traditions to rate a category all his own. Admitting he enjoys all kinds of music, but by the ‘70s Valdes started to play...
Posted Apr 11th, 2018
From The Chicago Tribune Review: Valdes and Rubalcaba: Cuban keyboard giants at Orchestra Hall By: Howard Reich Two concert grands. Two colossal virtuosos. One indelible evening. Granted, listeners who packed Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center on Friday evening already had high hopes for Cuban piano masters Chucho Valdes and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, judging by the long and raucous ovation that greeted...
Posted Feb 25th, 2018
From JazzTimes Jazz-Related Grammy Award Winners Announced Winners in these jazz-related categories at the 60th annual Grammy Awards were announced today in New York City, during the pre-telecast ceremony. The full lists of nominees appear below, with the winners in bold. JT wishes to congratulate all of the victors and nominees. Best Instrumental Composition: “Alkaline” Pascal Le Boeuf, composer (Le...
Posted Jan 29th, 2018
From Cubarte: Portal de la Cultura Cubana Chucho Valdés, toda la genialidad del jazz By: Alain Valdés Sierra Chucho Valdés es un extra clase, siempre tiene un as bajo la manga para sorprender a quienes piensan lo conocen del todo; sus mejores invenciones puede superarlas con una genialidad que deja boquiabiertos a los más exigentes seguidores del jazz. Así mostró...
Posted Jan 16th, 2018
From The Guardian Chucho Valdés/Gonzalo Rubalcaba review – Cuban wizards conjure a pulsating piano stampede By: John Fordham Between Friday morning’s opening shows and the arrival of Cuban piano maestros Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba at the Barbican on Saturday afternoon, some 40 events of the EFG London jazz festival’s 2017 programme had already hurtled by, with 300 or more...
Posted Nov 13th, 2017
From Downbeat Magazine Valdés Puts Efflorescent Pianism on Display at Blue Note By: Ted Panken Most 75-year-olds residing in Miami, Florida, aspire to a comfortable retirement. Not so for master pianist-composer Chucho Valdés, who keeps homes there and in Malaga, Spain, with his wife and 10-year-old son, while sustaining a busy touring schedule in various contexts. One of those contexts...
Posted May 13th, 2017
From Associate Press Havana Named As Host City For 2017 International Jazz Day NEW YORK (AP) — Herbie Hancock has twice before visited Havana to perform intimate solo-duet concerts with his Cuban counterpart Chucho Valdes, but at the end of April the two renowned jazz pianists will be collaborating on a grander scale. Hancock and Valdes will be serving as...
Posted Apr 11th, 2017
Be sure to tune in at jazzday.com on April 30th to watch the International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert featuring performances by IMN artists Regina Carter and Chucho Valdés – who will also be acting as one of the event’s Artistic Directors – and many other jazz stars from around the world. To see more click here
Posted Apr 11th, 2017
From REMEZCLA_ Film Feature: Grammy Winner Chucho Valdés On Improvising the Musical Score for Cuban Film ‘Esteban’ By: Manuel Betancourt he Havana Film Festival New York kicked off its 18th annual program with Jonal Cosculluela’s inspiring Esteban. The movie tells the rousing story of a young Afro-Cuban boy (Reynaldo Guanche) who suddenly becomes inspired to learn how to play the...
Posted Apr 3rd, 2017
From Prensa Latina Chucho Valdes Opens 32th International Jazz Festival in Cuba The 32nd edition of the International Jazz Plaza Festival has began in Cuba, with a performance by legendary pianist, Chucho Valdes, which was described as historical and unrepeatable. Valdes himself said, ‘this is without rehearsal, if we do it a thousand times, a thousand times will be different.’...
Posted Dec 16th, 2016
From NPR’s alt.latino Cuba is back in the news this week with the death of Fidel Castro, the leader of the island nation’s government for almost 60 years. All eyes have been on southern Florida as the Cuban-American community there celebrates closure for a disruption to their lives that started after Castro took power in 1959. However, the fact that...
Posted Nov 30th, 2016
From The Wall Street Journal By Larry Blumenfeld ‘Tribute to Irakere (Live in Marciac) Review – A reminder of how pianist Chucho Valdés changed the course of Cuban music. When pianist Chucho Valdés presented “Irakere 40” at New York’s Town Hall earlier this month, he rekindled the sound of a band with which he changed the course of Cuban music...
Posted Dec 1st, 2015
From The Boston Globe By Jon Garelick Chucho Valdés and band summon spirit of Irakere Performances of instrumental music often embody a tension between virtuoso display and the casting of narrative spells: look-no-hands acrobatics and the dream-like weave of ancient storytelling. The generous performance by iconic Cuban pianist-composer Chucho Valdés and his Afro-Cuban Messengers, in a Celebrity Series of Boston...
Posted Nov 13th, 2015
From CNN Espanol El rey del Latin Jazz, Chucho Valdés Watch Chucho’s CNN interview on Irakere past and present here
Posted Nov 12th, 2015
From The New York Times By Nate Chinen Chucho Valdés, the Pianist, Reflects on Irakere and His Career Chucho Valdés, the eminent Cuban pianist, bandleader and composer, carries himself with a sly balance of statesmanlike deliberation and youthful gusto. One day last month, not long before his 74th birthday, he folded his big frame onto a couch in a Midtown...
Posted Nov 2nd, 2015
From UMS Lobby by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof Growing up with Bebo: Cuban Pianist Chucho Valdés Saying that Chucho Valdés grew up in a musical household is like saying that Chelsea Clinton’s parents had an interest in politics. Chucho’s father, Bebo Valdés, was one of the most important composers, arrangers, and performers in pre-revolutionary Cuba. In the 1940s, when many top nightclubs...
Posted Oct 29th, 2015
From The Guardian Chucho Valdes/Irakere review – a Cuban hurricane of brass and bata Irakere may be Grammy-winning legends of Cuban music, but they don’t bring on genial gents in white flat caps just to sing serenades of old Havana. Now celebrating their 40th anniversary under the brilliant pianist Chucho Valdes’s continuing leadership, Irakere are a hurricane where the Buena...
Posted Jul 22nd, 2015
Irakere 40: Download (pdf)
Chucho Valdes Quintet (US): Download (pdf)
Chucho Valdes Quintet (INTL): Download (pdf)
Chucho Valdes Quartet (US): Download (pdf)
Chucho Valdes Quartet (INTL): Download (pdf)
In his masterwork Canto a Dios, Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Jesus ‘Chucho’ Valdes connects, and expands on, several essential threads in his music.
He seamlessly joins Afro-Cuban musical tradition, European classical music and jazz; he pays tribute to New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz and the sister city of Havana; he features longtime collaborators from his epochal Afro-Cuban-jazz-rock fusion group Irakere but also Cuba’s Symphony Orchestra and Choir. A deeply religious man, Valdes celebrates here both his Catholic and Afro-Cuban (Santeria) beliefs.
Valdes wrote the moving title track as a prayer for the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He spoke at the time of feeling ‘compelled’ to write a piece as a tribute to those who lost their lives or managed to survive but lost it all in the city that means so much to him. ‘I feel tied to that region because historically, Cuba has had shared roots with New Orleans through the influence of French music, ragtime, habanera, el blues, el jazz…’, he said at the presentation of the recording in Madrid in 2008.
The stunning La Tormenta y la Calma (The Storm and the Calm) is also a new piece and was inspired by the idea of the Mississippi river in the aftermath of the hurricane, ‘a river that saw in its banks, slaves singing their joys and sorrows.’ It includes some of the most dazzling piano work by Chucho on record.
Meanwhile, Tributo a Africa (Shaka Zulu), written in 1981, is a 16 minute plus Afro-Cuban symphony, with much drumming but also a strong Stan Getz influence. The other two compositions are Claudia, a classic ballad first recorded by Irakere in 1979 that has since become a Latin jazz standard, and Nanu, dedicated to the mother deity of Babalu Aye – St. Lazarus in the Santeria pantheon.
Both moving and dazzling, Canto a Dios is the work of a master at the height of his powers.
‘Irakere’ means ‘forest’ in the Yoruba language of West Africa. Four decades ago, Chucho Valdes founded Irakere, a revolutionary band that introduced African drum traditions to Cuban dance music. A small, Cuban-style big band with an explosive mix of jazz, rock, classical, Afro-Cuban and traditional Cuban music, Irakere was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie in a visit to Havana on a 1976 jazz cruise. In 1978 CBS producer Bruce Lundvall signed the band for the label. After winning a Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording in 1979, the group went on to create an extraordinary body of work that includes great dance recordings such as Homenaje a Beny More (Pimienta 1989) and Indestructible (Sony 1997); explorations of Afro-Cuban religious music such as Babalu Aye (Bembe 1999) featuring the great Orisha music singer Lazaro Ros; as well as ambitious projects such as Tierra En Trance (Areito 1983) and Misa Negra (Messidor 1987).
With the fresh sound of his Afro-Cuban Messengers, Chucho Valdes honors Cuba’s African roots with an Irakere revival.
A pianist of imperial command, possessed of a dazzling, deceptively casual virtuosity
The New York Times
On the new Border-Free, his mastery as composer and player is on full display: an encyclopedic vocabulary of Afro-Cuban rhythms and an expansive palette that includes all manner of modern jazz as well as traditional classical repertoire
The Boston Globe
It would be reasonable to assume that the magisterial Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés has covered every possible angle on the music of his homeland… Yet he finds some new terrain to till on Border-Free
The New York Times
El maestro Chucho Valdés is one of the great treasures of the music world… On his new album, Border-Free … Valdés grounds his work in the aural history of mother Cuba, while seamlessly weaving in aspects of folk, jazz and classical to create a singular musical vision
Downbeat
Be it as a composer or as a pianist, Valdés… is one of the great pillars in the history of contemporary jazz
The Houston Chronicle