Together. Honoring My Father.

Carlos Averhoff Jr.

(Sunnyside)

In Together Honoring My Father (Sunnyside), saxophonist Carlos Averhoff Jr. pays tribute to his late father, Cuban saxophonist and educator Carlos Averhoff, and resumes an interrupted conversation.

At Averhoff Sr.’s passing in December 2016, the two had begun to collaborate on a recording. It’s hardly a big leap to see it as more than just a musical project. The notes accompanying the release talk of how Averhoff Jr. “did not get much direct instruction from his father” and how “the relationship between father and son strained when the elder Averhoff left Cuba, finally settling [in 1997] in Miami.” But in 2006, Averhoff Jr., then 26, moved to Miami, and father and son got to work together a few times. Two years later, Averhoff Jr. moved on to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory and grow his professional career in a more welcoming jazz environment.

Eight years passed, and father and son agreed to work on a project together. There were some sessions in 2016, but the Averhoffs managed to record together only one track. When Averhoff Sr. died, the album seemed to die with him. But in December 2020, Carlos Jr. decided to complete it.

In the process, Together, which started as a father-son collaboration became a memorial.

Averhoff Sr. was an excellent player best known as a member of the Afro Cuban jazz-rock small big band Irakere. As part of a fearsome front line that at one point included trumpeters Jorge Varona and Arturo Sandoval, and reedman Paquito D’Rivera, Averhoff might have been overlooked by some. But his tone, impeccable technique, and on-point soloing were indispensable to the group’s sound. Written by Averhoff Jr., it should come as no surprise that “Sequence For You,” the opening track in Together, is a tribute to Irakere. It features pianist Chucho Valdés, the band’s founder, principal composer, and arranger, and saxophonist German Velasco and trumpeter Juan Munguia, two Averhoff Sr. bandmates on Irakere. Valdés offers a  fiery, expansive introduction and later returns for a solo brimming with urgency. Carlos Sr. would have smiled at the fireworks of the unison passages, played fast, precisely, and with swing on the fly — an Irakere trademark.

Averhoff Jr. has a muscular, virile tone with a hint of a rough edge — but he’s a heavyweight with a dancer’s feet. He contributes five of the eight pieces, including the title track, which, with its jagged, angular melody and eccentric rhythms (an echo of “the elder’s sense of humor,” suggest the accompanying notes), plays like a variation on a Monk tune.

There’s also an elegant but streetwise conga, “Oriented Conga.” Here the tenor and flute soloing by Averhoff Jr. and Orlando “Maraca” Valle suggest a sort of yin and yang of power and lightness. As for other highlights, Sam Rivers’ “Beatrice” gets a forceful, probing reading with special mentions to pianist Jim Gasior, and drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernández.

Together ends at the beginning: with a reading of Charlie Parker’s classic “Donna Lee ” featuring Carlos Sr. on soprano and his son on tenor (we hear Averhoff Sr. saying “Vamos,” Let’s go, to launch the tune). Arranged by the elder Averhoff with an Afro Cuban groove, a bop feel, and melodic hairpin turns played fast in octave unison, this “Donna Lee” would not have been out of place on an Irakere set.

If the proper response to a poem is a poem, perhaps the appropriate tribute to an excellent musician (especially one who happens to be your father) is music well-played, with heart and flawless technique. In Together, Carlos Averhoff Jr. pays a proper homage and more.

An edited version of this review appeared in the summer 2022 issue of JAZZIZ magazine

Chucho Valdés, piano; Armando Gola, bass; Paquito D’Rivera, sax; Diego Urcola, trumpet; Dafnis Prieto, drums, and Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno, percussion, at the Arsht Center, Miami, Saturday. Photo Fernando González ©  

From the moment it was scheduled, it was clear that the stop of Paquito D’Rivera and Chucho Valdés reunion tour at the Arsht Center in Miami, FL, would be a special date. “There’s only one other place this would be even more special,” said D’Rivera early on. Nothing more needed to be said. Many in the Cuban community here grew up on the island listening to the phenomenal Irakere, the group Valdés co-founded, directed, and for which he was the principal composer and arranger, and in which D’Rivera was a key player and composer. After more than 40 years of separation, these old friends were getting to perform together again, and the expectation was musical brilliance wrapped in a feel-good story — and that’s how it played out.

Ably supported by an excellent group featuring Diego Urcola on trumpet and valve trombone, Armando Gola on acoustic and electric bass, Dafnis Prieto on drums, and Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno on percussion, D’Rivera and Valdés didn’t settle for warm and fuzzy nostalgia. Instead, they used their telepathic communication to probe old favorites (“Mambo Influenciado,” “Claudia”) and a handful of new pieces; salute Venezuelan music (a dazzling guest turn by cuatro virtuoso Jorge Glem) and merrily wander off into “what-the-heck-let’s-try-this” improvisations. Their Mozart tribute invoked classical themes, turned them into blues calls, became a danzón, involved the audience in a singalong, and somehow found its way back to a, well, let’s call it a Caribbean Mozart, as irreverent as the old master was purported to be.

Still, notable, given the setting, the emotional charge surrounding this reunion, and the license to overplay from an adoring audience, was how the music, not individual look-at-me virtuoso displays, remained the message throughout the evening. Chucho Valdés and Paquito D’Rivera became lifelong friends, in part, because of a deep, shared love of music — and that’s what they celebrated: The music.

It seems an obvious and simple choice but, especially in these me-me times, it’s not.

Chucho and Paquito’s concert in Miami Saturday was a treat.

Delgres is singer, songwriter, and guitarist Pascal Danaë, Baptiste Brondy on drums, and vocals, and Rafgee on sousaphone. (Photo courtesy of Remy Serre)

The Creole blues of the Paris-based power trio Delgres suggest the earthy sound of Mississippi blues reimagined with an African and French Caribbean accent. Featuring electric guitar, drums, and sousaphone, a brass instrument of the tuba family in place of a conventional acoustic or electric bass, the trio can hit like a heavy blues-rock group one moment and then hint at a New Orleans street parade the next. The lyrics, sung mainly in Creole, may tell personal stories or speak of matters such as poverty, social justice, and the plight of the immigrant.

It’s an old blues sleight of hand: a spoonful of reality in a serving of a good time.

“This is probably a Black music thing that’s universal,” says singer, songwriter, and guitarist Pascal Danaë, the founder and leader of Delgres. “The blues is not sad music. They might be talking about terrible conditions, they might be talking about terrible losses, but the bottom line is hope. That hope comes from when you pick up your guitar and start singing about your problem. They’re going to hear the problem — but the music is for having a good time and will also give them the cure. We get the trouble and medicine at the same time.”

Comprising Danaë, Baptiste Brondy on drums and vocals, and Rafgee on sousaphone, Delgres headlines the Fête de la Musique at the North Beach Bandshell Tuesday, June 21, at 8 p.m. The show is presented by the Cultural Services of the Consulate of France in Miami and the Rhythm Foundation, in partnership with Make Music Miami and with the support of Miami Beach Arts in the Parks. The event is free, but it does require RSVP.

The group has released two albums “Mo Jodi” (“I’ll Die Today”) and “4 AM.”  Sang in Creole and English, “Mo Jodi” addresses issues such as freedom and slavery. It served notice about the direction of the music while paying tribute to the historical figure the trio has taken its name.

Louis Delgrès, a Creole officer in the French Army, died in Guadeloupe in 1802, fighting against Napoleon’s Army, which had been sent to the French Caribbean to re-establish slavery. The follow-up, “4 AM,” speaks of immigrants dying for a new beginning, joblessness, and slavery, but also family stories such as the anguish of separation when parents emigrate and children are temporarily left behind.

“I’m doing a bit of my own therapy with all this,” Danaë once said about the themes in his lyrics.

“Growing up in France as a French person, but of Guadeloupean roots, not completely French, … just led me to wonder later on in my life: So, who am I exactly?” elaborates Danaë now. “You start scratching that surface and start going deeper and deeper. That’s what’s in those songs. Even when I play like fierce rock and roll or very heavy, heavy guitar, it’s a release from pain and things that I have to cope with.”

Born and raised in Paris by Guadeloupean parents, Danaë grew up listening to a variety of music, from Cuban Son to Congolese rumba to jazz and English rock. He got his first guitar at 15, a gift from his brother-in-law to pass the time one summer. He started playing American folk music at home and eventually graduated to playing jazz and fusion in clubs around Paris. In 1997 he moved to London, where he lived for eight years, and then to Amsterdam, where he spent three years before returning to Paris. Along the way, he worked as a studio musician and performed and recorded with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour, and Harry Belafonte.

While in Amsterdam, he discovered the Dobro, a resonator guitar with a distinct sound that, says Danaë, “comes with the history of the blues.” The find had a profound impact on his work. “You must let it resonate  . . .  so you start listening to yourself. It becomes a dialogue with the instrument. It was like learning to walk again. I use an electric guitar on stage because it’s more practical, but when I get back to the Dobro, it’s like, okay, this is the blues, this is roots.”

He was at the time “at a crossroads between different professional pathways,” he once said in an interview, and the find led him to play blues. He said his writing acquired a new depth, and he went back to singing in Creole, “like my ancestors had in Guadeloupe.”

Danaë is working on a third album with Delgres, speaking about new battles he once felt had long been settled.

“When we did “Mo Jodi,” some people looked at it like ‘well, that’s something in the past,’” says Danaë. “But you look at the world now, and it’s all coming back. It’s not a thing from the past. The fight about freedom, dignity, equality, and injustice is now. We have to keep our eyes open and keep talking about these things because there’s still a lot of work to be done. So, I feel that we as artists must do our part. It’s a small one, but we need to keep going, keep singing those songs and get people together as much as we can.”

This story was first published by Artburst Miami, 16 June 2022