Pianist Rolando Luna with Felipe Lamoglia, sax, Jose Armando Gola, bass, and Jonathan Joseph, drums, at Miami-Dade Auditorium, Saturday, part of Global Cuba Fest 2024 Photo Fernando Gonzalez ©

The performances by Cuban pianists Ernan López Nussa and Rolando Luna and their groups at Miami Dade Auditorium on Saturday were an at times impressive but ultimately unsatisfying bookend to this year’s Global Cuba Fest, which opened with a concert by pianist Omar Sosa the previous weekend.

López Nussa, who is in his mid-60s, has blended formal classical training, a passion for jazz, and Cuban music into an original and organic style. His distinguished career includes being part of landmark fusion groups such as Afrocuba and Cuarto Espacio and also accompanying singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. Since then, he has had a notable solo career. Luna, in his mid-40s, came relatively late to the piano, having studied guitar before “discovering” the instrument. He made up for lost time in a hurry. He mixed formal piano schooling and a bandstand education that included substantial stints with singer Omara Portuondo,  the Buena Vista Social Club, and salsa star Isaac Delgado. Just for good measure, in 2007, Luna won the jazz competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Both are capable of lightning-fast single-note runs, turn-on-a-dime rhythmic and harmonic developments, and slyly quote “The Star Spangled Banner” and “El Manisero” on the fly or use George Shearing, Maria Teresa Vera, Debussy, The Bee Gees, or, in the case of López Nussa, Bach, and Chopin, as the take-off point for their variations (López Nussa called them his musical “interventions”). Along the way, they colored every picture and filled every space.
But that you can do all that doesn’t mean you should do all that.
It might dazzle some people at first, but the approach inevitably brings diminishing returns — which is what happened on Saturday.

The difference between a good player and an exceptional artist is often measured not by what they play but by what they choose not to play.
The right silence at the right time can speak volumes — and so can its absence.

Photo © by David Sproule, courtesy of Otá Records

The Global Cuba Fest is an annual event by two Miami-based non-profit arts presenters, Fundarte and the Miami Light Project, and celebrates the Cuban diaspora’s rhythms, music, and culture. Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa, the headliner at the opening night at the Miami Beach Bandshell on Saturday, March 2, embodies the spirit and ambition of the event. (Two other exceptional Cuban pianists, Ernán López Nussa and Rolando Luna, headline the second night of Global Cuba Fest on Saturday, March 9 )

For Sosa, who will appear with his new Quarteto Americanos, his identity as a Cuban of African descent remains a starting point for exploring a pan-African culture without borders.

His career spans 30 years, has been documented in 35 releases thus far, and his work has been recognized with four GRAMMYs and three Latin GRAMMYs nominations. He continues collaborating with an impressive list of North American, African, Arabic, European, Indian, and Latin musicians, treating post-bop jazz and cha-cha-chá, hip hop, rhythms of the Moroccan Gnawa tradition, or ritual music of the Orisha religion as different expressions of shared African roots. By connecting seemingly disparate sources and exploring old traditions with a contemporary approach, he often suggests conversations among long-lost relatives.

The results then are not just surprising but illuminating.

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