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.
