Alfredo Rodriguez with Gilmar Gomes, Pedrito Martinez, Michael Olivera, Munir Hossn, and Majela Herrera, last night at the North Beach Bandshell.

By his own account, Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguez hadn’t played in South Florida in about four years. So for his appearance at the Global Cuba Fest at the North Beach Bandshell last night, he expanded his trio calling on several long-time collaborators and had himself a concert — and a neighborhood party.

An outdoor event is not the best setting for subtleties, so, smartly, Rodriguez made the best of it in the show’s early moments. Backed chiefly by his working trio – Munir Hossn, bass, and guitar, Michael Olivera, drums — Rodriguez at times managed to turn the sold-out Bandshell into a music club. Then he showed his stylistic range moving smoothly from his meditative “Dawn,” and a post-bop reading of Consuelo Velazquez’ classic “Besame Mucho,” to a salute to Yemayá, the deity of the oceans in the Afro-Cuban religion best known as Santeria, and a spirited version of Ernesto Lecuona’s “Gitanerías, ” the latter two featuring percussionist and vocalist Pedrito Martínez.

Alfredo Rodriguez with Richard Bona, performing their duet “Raices.”

As the group on stage grew larger with new additions, the music also became more expansive (there was even a version of “Thriller,” Rodriguez’s salute to his champion, producer Quincy Jones), and the mood was unabashedly celebratory. Then bassist Richard Bona took the stage, lit the match, and a party broke out with singalongs and dancing.

After months of isolation, there are no complaints about an evening out in Miami Beach, with good music, a bunch of fellow music lovers, the right temperature, and a slight breeze from the ocean. Just count me as one who wants to hear more playing from Rodriguez in a listening room.

Global Cuba Fest continues with a concert next week featuring pianist and composer Jorge Luis Pacheco with singer Daymé Arocena, and a group including Ramses Rodríguez, drums, Yorgis Goiricelayam bass, and Otto Santana, percussion; and then saxophonist Carlos Averhoff Jr. with pianist Harold López-Nussa, trumpeter Brian Lynch, flutist Nestor Torres, singer Maggie Marquez, and guitarist Ahmed Barroso.

If you are in or around Miami next week you might want to check this out.

When: Saturday, March 12 at 8:00 p.m.

What: Jorge Luis Pacheco and Carlos Averhoff Jr. in concert

Where: Miami Dade County Auditorium (2901 W Flagler St., Miami, FL 33135)

Tickets: Ticketmaster; by phone (800) 745-3000 and at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium

Box Office, Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Cost: $40

+Info: http://www.FUNDarte.us | http://www.miamilightproject.com | http://www.miamidadecountyauditorium.org

Alfredo Rodriguez. Photo by Robert Ifarreli. Courtesy Fundarte.

The 15th edition of Global Cuba Fest — presented by Miami Light Project and FUNDarte on March 5 and 12 — will offer a snapshot of the island’s music and culture constructed from images and sounds from a dozen different angles. Few are more improbable than those by Cuban pianist and composer Alfredo Rodríguez and Cameroonian bassist, singer and composer Richard Bona.

The son of a well-known television presenter, singer and entertainer of the same name, Rodríguez, 36, has turned a personal story that reads like a Hollywood script into an international music career. Producer Quincy Jones heard Rodríguez at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2006 and sought to work with him. Rodríguez had to return to Cuba, but neither one forgot.
Three years later, after visiting his father in Mexico, Rodríguez took a flight to Laredo, TX, carrying, he once recalled, a suitcase with a sweater, and a pair of jeans. At the airport he was arrested. He pleaded with immigration officials, told the absurd-sounding truth — that he was coming to work with Quincy Jones — and they eventually put him on a cab to the border, where he started his trek to Los Angeles and a new life. His first concert in his new home was at the Hollywood Bowl. He has since recorded five albums, three of them co-produced by Jones.

Once anchored on formal classical studies, and the schooling on Cuban popular music he got playing on stage in his father’s orchestra, Rodríguez’s music has been opened to global influences by constant traveling and Jones’ ecumenical musical outlook.

“I am much more of a global artist now,” Rodríguez said recently. “The world that I would like to see has no walls and no borders.”

Rodríguez, who has been living in South Florida for the past two years, is putting his globalism to work in this show.

Continue reading →

Chucho Valdés and Paquito D´Rivera rehearsing for their reunion recording.

Paquito D’Rivera first heard Chucho Valdés at a jam session in Havana in the early 60s. Paquito was 13 at the time. Seven years his senior, Chucho was already “a monster pianist,” as Paquito recalled in his autobiography My Sax Life (Northwestern). It was the beginning of a friendship (and mutual admiration society, Chucho calls Paquito “a genius”) that, over the years, produced extraordinary work. They most notably collaborated in Irakere, the Afro-Cuban jazz-rock small big band that in the 70s, and for the next two decades, set a high watermark in Latin jazz.

Paquito defected while on tour with Irakere in Madrid in 1980 and eventually settled in New York. Chucho, the band’s co-founder, director, principal composer, and arranger, launched a parallel career to highlight his piano playing in 1998 but stayed with Irakere, off and on, until 2005.

For the past four decades, their individual careers continued building as stories of great achievement — but their paths crossed only occasionally. Even brothers have their differences, and their friendship went through trying moments, resulting, at times, in some distancing. But these past few days, the mutual affection, and their joy for having back their old compinche, their partner in crime, set the tone of the music, the rehearsals, and the recording sessions.

Yes, there were old war stories told and laughing involved.

The playing was also pretty good.

Pandemic permitting, it will be a treat having them share stages again.

The “family photo” at the end of the recording sessions at the University of Miami. From left to right, Diego Urcola (trumpet and trombone), Paquito D’Rivera, Chucho Valdés (yes, in matching shirts), Dafnis Prieto (drums), Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno (percussion), and Armando Gola (acoustic and electric bass)