Pianist and singer Eliane Elias, a premier Jobim interpreter, is a headliner of the “Jobim and the Music of Brazil” tribute at the Arsht Performing Arts Center in Miami, November 6 – Photo by Nagy Attila, courtesy of the artist.
Making music sound difficult is easy. Creating subtly subversive music and making it sound easy demands a special talent. Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim made a mark in American culture with music of deceptive simplicity.
Part of the repertoire in concert halls or heard in the piped-in music in malls or elevators, his songs are by now part of the American soundtrack, from “Desafinado,” his first US hit in 1962, and “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), a massive, global hit in 1965, to “Chega De Saudade” (No More Blues), “Insensatez” (How Insensitive), and “Aguas de Março” (Waters of March).
Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim was also known as Tom Jobim, a variant of Ton Ton, the nickname his sister Helena once gave him. “Ah, the critics in Brazil began to say, ‘Tom is an American name.’ ,” he once lamented in an interview, throwing his hands up in mock despair.
The legacy of Jobim, who died in 1994 and would have been celebrating his 100th birthday next January 25, will be honored Friday (November 6) at the opening concert of the 2026-27 Jazz Roots series at the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center.
Titled “Jobim and The Music of Brazil,” the tribute features pianist and singer Eliane Elias, virtuoso clarinetist Anat Cohen, a non-Brazilian champion of Brazilian music; Trio da Paz, comprising guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta and drummer Duduka Da Fonseca; pianist Shelly Berg, and University of Miami Frost School of Music’s Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra with resident conductor Scott Flavin.
From left to right, Chucho Valdés, Joe Lovano, sax, John Patitucci,bass, Marcus Gilmore, drums and Roberto Jr. Vizcaino, percussion,at theAdrienne Arsht Center, Miami, Saturday.Photo by Taylor Brown, courtesy of theAdrienne Arsht Center.
Leading a superb hand-picked quintet, Cuban pianist Jesús “Chucho” Valdés celebrated his upcoming 85th birthday with a concert at the Arsht Center in Miami on Saturday that took him back to the beginnings of his career. It played out as a love letter to standards – the basic texts in the liturgy of jazz – and the art of improvisation.
In his brief introduction, casually sitting at the piano by himself, Valdés set the evening’s tone: intimate, inviting, and no-nonsense. These were some of the pieces he learned as a teenager, and he would play them with a group of musicians he admired and who had influenced him. But before that, “we’ll start from the end,” he announced as he introduced a new piece from a solo piano recording he had just completed. It wasn’t what anyone might have expected. It was brief but intense. There was no nostalgia. Instead, there were explosions of high energy, lengthy, lightning-fast runs; splashes of vivid harmonies set by unexpected turns and mood changes; until the storm died out in a whispered ending. It suggested a note of where Valdés might be today — but that would be for another evening.
Saturday, Valdés, alongside Joe Lovano on tenor sax, Marcus Gilmore on drums, John Patitucci on bass, and Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno on percussion, set out to mine, one more time, tried-and-true classics such as “Blue Monk,” “Body and Soul,” and “Green Dolphin Street,” and in the process, turned the Arsht Center into an intimate jazz club.
It was a remarkable performance, both as a group and individually. At its best, improvisation is instant composition; it’s writing a piece within a piece, in the air, on the spot. And yes, it’s also a place for musicians to stretch out and showcase their technical prowess – always a risky proposition with lesser players. Saturday, no matter how far Patitucci took his melodic variations, how Lovano chose to suggest a vocalist through his phrasing and inflection, or how many rhythms and tonal colors Gilmore and Vizcaíno layered on their drums, the shared idea was consistently serving the music at hand. Given that narcissism seems to be the default approach these days, from sports to high politics, this was a gift worthy of the occasion.
As for the birthday man, while the concert celebrated Valdés the player, not the composer, the program smartly included his “Mambo Influenciado.” It’s a statement piece in his long career and a Latin Jazz standard in its own right and it got a many-sided probing by the group. Another highlight was the one piece in the program that was not a jazz standard: Gabriel Fauré’s “Pavane in F♯ minor.” The reading by the Valdés – Patitucci duet was both elegant and subtly forceful, with a distinct jazz accent. “It will be Fauré as played by Bill Evans,” Valdés had suggested, tongue-in-cheek, in our conversation the week before the concert. By the end of their performance, Evans, Valdés’s jazz piano hero, was no doubt hovering around the house, listening in.
Happy birthday, Mr. Valdés. Same place, next year?
Chucho Valdés, celebrates his 85th birthday in style, tipping his hat to the beginnings of his extraordinary career playing jazz standards. “Those standards I played in my early years are the foundation of what came after in jazz for me,” he said. Photo by Martin Espino Garcia, courtesy of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
As he discusses preparations for his 85th birthday celebration at the Knight Concert Hall in Miami this Saturday, October 3, NEA Jazz Master and winner of seven Grammy and seven Latin Grammy Awards, pianist, composer, and bandleader Jesús “Chucho” Valdés sounds almost giddy.
“The group I’ll be playing with is very interesting because I chose some of the many musicians who have influenced me the most throughout my career,” he says, in a conversation in Spanish from his home in South Florida. “So, I thought of Terence Blanchard on trumpet; Joe Lovano, on tenor sax; Marcus Gilmore on drums; John Patitucci on bass; and Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno (a member of Valdés’ Royal Quartet) on percussion.”
“And the setlist we’re going to perform will consist of standards, the songs I played in my early days. It was the foundation of everything that came after — and we’re going to do it all without rehearsing. We’re going to improvise,” he says with a chuckle. He mentions classics such as Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation,” Dizzy Gillespie’s “Groovin’ High,”; and “St. Thomas” by the late Sonny Rollins.
It suggests both, a return to the beginnings of an extraordinary career spanning more than 60 years, and a tribute to improvisation and the defining art in jazz of creating compositions within compositions on the fly.
The approach follows Valdes’ path in recent years. This past decade has been marked by glances back as he moved forward, such as the recording of “Jazz Bata 2,” in 2018, which revisited the daring idea of a piano jazz trio featuring batá drums that he first explored in 1972; or the reunion in 2022 with his long-time friend and musical co-conspirator, reedman Paquito D’Rivera, after more than 40 years apart. And then there was Irakere 50, a 2024 celebration of 50th anniversary of the Afro-Cuban-jazz-rock fusion group Valdés co-founded, directed, and for which he was the principal composer and arranger. The concert was highlighted by the presence of two key players of the original Irakere: trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and D’Rivera.
Both events took place at the Arsht Center.
Chucho Valdés, piano, Arturo Sandoval, trumpet, and Paquito D’Rivera, saxophone, performing variations on “Body and Soul” at the Irakere 50 tribute and celebration at the Arsht Center in Miami, in 2024.
