Fusions suggest borrowing, compromise, calculation. Miguel Zenón plays who he is. Born in a tough, poor neighborhood in Santurce, Puerto Rico in a non-musical family, Zenón, 27, grew up surrounded by the sound of salsa and traditional bomba y plena, got a classical music education, discovered jazz on the radio with Charlie Parker and the …
No one would seriously argue that a musician has to be born in Vienna to play Mozart. Still, having a Latin-Caribbean pianist, and one best known as a jazz virtuoso, play symphonic Gershwin may raise a few eyebrows. Yet, on a closer examination, Michel Camilo turns out to be singularly qualified. Like George Gershwin before …
“Jazz is not a what, it is a how,” said pianist Bill Evans. It is a deceptively simple statement with profound implications. Rather than defining jazz by a certain canon — demanding, for example, that it includes a direct connection to the blues, have swing or some other distinctive, essential element — Evans suggests jazz …
Paquito D’Rivera plays the music of Armando Manzanero Read More »
Sonocardiograma, the name of Cuban singer and songwriter Daymé Arocena new release is not just a title but also both a description and declaration of purpose. “The name Sonocardiograma is inspired in the word echocardiogram, a medical exam to check if your heart is working properly,” explained Daymé in a recent conversation from her home in Havana, Cuba. …
Masterpieces spark new work. Piazzolla in Brooklyn was inspired by a dreadful recording. Take Me Dancing, a 1959 jazz tango album by New Tango master Astor Piazzolla, was dreadful. Astor Piazzolla said so. Still, Pablo Aslan was curious. Aslan, an Argentine-born, Brooklyn-based bassist, bandleader, and producer, has been a pioneer in jazz tango, working on …
Astor Piazzolla imagined la hora cero as the time after midnight, “ an hour of absolute end and absolute beginning.” It was not by chance, then, that early in his career, he titled one of his breakthrough pieces “Buenos Aires Hora Cero.” It could not be by chance that, as he was entering his autumn …
It’s easy to sound complicated. It takes a special artist to make complex ideas sound simple. It is an old concept, but one worth keeping in mind as we muddle on through the turn of the century. This is a time when the choices seem to have been reduced to nostalgia or facile, cut-and-paste esthetics. …