Chucho Valdés
PROJECTS:
CHUCHO VALDÉS ROYAL QUARTET
Winner of seven Grammy and six Latin Grammy Awards, the Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Chucho Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz. In a rich career spanning sixty years, Chucho has pushed boundaries in pursuit of new expressions in Afro-Cuban music. His influence in the genre is immeasurable, his work establishing the standard by which younger generations set out to create their own.
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 with the seminal Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. Chucho is perhaps best known as the founder, pianist, and main composer and arranger of Irakere, a landmark ensemble in Cuban music. Chucho led 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, like the Afro-Cuban Messengers, Jazz Batá, and his acclaimed Royal Quartet.
Chucho has been named an NEA Jazz Master, is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, has been inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a DC Jazz Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, his name joining an illustrious list that includes Kenny Barron, James Moody, Ellis Marsalis, George Wein, and Dave Brubeck.
A restless visionary forever evolving Afro-Cuban music, Chucho Valdés is as creative and playful as ever on his 2024 release, Cuba & Beyond.
IRAKERE 50
Chucho Valdés: Irakere 50 is a celebration of Irakere, the Cuban band that, with its bold fusion of Afro-Cuban ritual music, popular Cuban music styles, jazz and rock, marked a before and after in Latin jazz.
Irakere was brought to international attention by Dizzy Gillespie, who was visiting Havana on a jazz cruise, in 1977. The following year, producer Bruce Lundvall, then president of CBS, went to Cuba on Dizzy’s advice, heard the band live and signed it on the spot. The same year Irakere debuted, unannounced, as “surprise guests,” at Carnegie Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. Selections from that performance were later included in Irakere (CBS), the band’s debut recording in the United States. The album won a Grammy as Best Latin Recording in 1979. Irakere’s innovative sound forever changed the landscape of Cuban music and influenced generations of musicians to follow.
As members such as Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval came and went, Chucho stayed with Irakere until 2005. Through the many changes the band experienced over the years, he remained the one, essential constant. In 2015, Chucho celebrated the 40th anniversary of the birth of Irakere, his iconic band, with a world tour. Tribute to Irakere: Live in Marciac (Jazz Village / Comanche Music), which captured a performance on that tour, won a Grammy for the Best Latin Jazz Album in 2016.
A springboard from Chucho’s Grammy-winning Afro-Cuban Messengers band, Irakere 50 is as much a retrospective of his celebrated career as a showcase for a blazing new generation of Cuban talent. Chucho says, “When I decided to do a tribute to that marvelous band, I also decided I didn’t want to do it with the charter members but with players from the generations of musicians that grew up and learned from Irakere. I thought it would be more meaningful. It’s a tribute from one generation to another.”
SYMPHONY
Seamlessly joining Afro-Cuban rhythms with New Orleans jazz and Western classical traditions, Chucho Valdés’ symphonic repertoire celebrates a genre he helped to build. 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. Chucho is available to perform with orchestras as a soloist or with his Jazz Batá quartet.
PRESS QUOTES:
“As a pianist, composer and arranger, Chucho Valdés has become one of the most influential figures in modern Afro-Cuban jazz”
Billboard
“A pianist of imperial command, possessed of a dazzling, deceptively casual virtuosity”
The New York Times
“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
“El maestro Chucho Valdés is one of the great treasures of the music world… 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
