• Home
  • About
  • Contact

Jazz With an Accent

~ Global music in the 21st century

Jazz With an Accent

Category Archives: Latin Jazz

Daymé Arocena Sonocardiogram

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by Fernando González in Home, Jazz, Latin Jazz

≈ Leave a comment

daymeLive
Daymé Arocena performing at the North Beach Bandshell, Miami Beach, in March 2019

These are my liner notes for Daymé Arocena’ s Sonocardiograma (Brownswood Recordings) released last month. 

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. “When we were thinking about the concept of the album and its title, we knew we wanted to create something that was a snapshot of who we are inside.”

The “we” Daymé refers to is her quartet, comprising Jorge Luis Lagarza Pérez, piano, and arranging; Rafael Aldama Chiroles, bass; and Marcos Morales Valdés, drums. “We not only always play together, and tour together but we celebrate birthdays together, accompany each other after breakups, console each other with family matters. We are a family,” she says.

“ We wanted it to capture our personality, our world, how we hear the music,” she explains. “We recorded it in Havana. There were no producers, and we didn’t want to go to a recording studio, and we lucked out and found this great space that had been an artist’s studio and we recorded there, all in one room, surrounded by art, cats and dogs and ambient noises. We wanted a record that had the energy and the spirit we have in concert. Sonocardiograma is about who we are.”

Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

A New Season of Jazz Roots and the Art of Selling Jazz in Miami

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Fernando González in Home, Jazz, Latin Jazz, On Music

≈ Leave a comment

Trumpeter Arturo Sandoval performing on a Tribute to Tito Puente, part of a recent Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami. Photo courtesy Daniel Azoulay ©

A few years ago, discussing the beginnings of Jazz Roots, the jazz concert series at the Adrienne Arsht Center, in Miami,  the late musician, producer, record label owner and entrepreneur Larry Rosen, a co-founder of the event, estimated that the opening season had “about 650 subscriptions — of which about 200 were from our neighbors in Fisher Island. And in most cases, it was not because they were great jazz fans. They just thought ‘These are our neighbors and we want to support them.’ That’s why they did it.”  It was a modest beginning, especially for such a large hall, but Rosen was neither surprised nor intimidated.
He had moved to South Florida from New York in 2000 and in that conversation he shrugged as he noted how “anyone who’s in the jazz business knew that Miami was not a jazz market. […] I certainly knew what to expect. But you don’t really understand Miami unless you live here.”
Jazz remains a hard sell in South Florida. And yet, since its launching in 2008, Jazz Roots has not only found its audience but become one of the mainstays of Miami’s cultural landscape.

Jazz Roots opens its season on Friday with British Invasion – Latin Style, featuring singer and songwriter José Feliciano, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, pianist and arranger Shelly Berg, saxophonist Tim Ries, singers Lucy Woodward, Kate Reid, and Fantine and the University of Miami’s Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra.
The series continues with concerts by Mavis Staples and Charlie Musselwhite; pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro- Latin Jazz Orchestra; singer Kurt Elling; pianist, arranger, and composer Dave Grusin (who co-founded with Rosen the all-digital GRP record label), and saxophonist Branford Marsalis.

Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Carmen París Brings the Songs From Home to the World — and Vice-Versa

22 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Fernando González in Home, Jazz, Latin Jazz, On Music

≈ Leave a comment


Carmen París. Photo by José Aguilar courtesy Centro Cultural Español, Miami

While introducing a song, halfway through her concert at Miami Dade County Auditorium, Friday, Spanish singer and songwriter Carmen París grumbled about globalization and what she saw as the resulting loss of traditional cultures. It was a curious observation for an artist who has built her career on blurring musical borders and subverting the tradition. Friday, París spent much of her show offering fascinating (and successful) global reimaginations of the jota, a traditional dance originated in Aragon, a region in northeast Spain, where she grew up.
Perhaps globalization is in the ear of the beholder.

Smartly accompanied by pianist Diego Ebbeler and percussionist Jorge Tejerina, París presented a program titled “En Sintesis” (Summing Up), in which she looked back at her 30-year career. She has a powerful voice, a phrasing tinted by tinges of tango, Cuban, and Mediterranean music, and an engaging stage presence. As for the repertoire, she offered jotas in which she braided elements of tango, cha cha cha, and Middle Eastern music (“Guarani”); tango and Afro-Cuban music (“Mucho Ringo-Rango”), and Afro-Uruguayan candombe (“Cuerpo Triste”). She also included, for good measure, a jota in English and Spanish (“Just One?”) that she has recorded with a big band.
But the program also included a nod to son (the anti-globalization “Chufla Dragón”); a piece she wryly introduced as “a quantum bolero,” (“Distancia Espeluznante”) and a beautiful, a capella version of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “La Nana del Caballo Grande.” As if to personify the theme of global encounters, a couple of old friends, Cuban singers Danais Bautista and Gema Corredera, joined Paris for one song each.

The political and economic consequences of globalization is a discussion for another day. But blending traditions is as old as humanity, as natural as a person moving from one village to another, bringing along instruments and memories. In the hands of an artist who truly listens and is as talented as Carmen París, the mixing, the borrowing,  and the creative “stealing” offer unexpected possibilities for all involved.
This globalizing, we like.

 

October 2019

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Search

Categories

  • Home
  • In Other Words
  • On Music
    • Jazz
    • Latin Jazz

Recent Posts

  • Daymé Arocena Sonocardiogram
  • A New Season of Jazz Roots and the Art of Selling Jazz in Miami
  • Dancing with the Spirits
My Tweets

Archives

  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • October 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • October 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • December 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • May 2011
  • December 2009
  • September 2009
  • December 2007
  • January 2001
  • September 1995
  • December 1994
  • November 1987

RECENT TWEETS

Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.

Categories

  • Home
  • In Other Words
  • On Music
    • Jazz
    • Latin Jazz

Archives

CONTACT INFO

P.O. Box 402702 Miami Beach FL 33140 - 0702 USA fernando@fgonow.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: