A Cubanized Blending of Musical Languages

Photo: ina Fineberg for The New York Times
By BEN RATLIFFDEC. 21, 2014
One possible result of a normalized relationship between the United States and Cuba: greater ease in the creation of concerts like “New Jazz Frontiers,” an experiment and a success presented on Friday and Saturday nights at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room.

Which is not to say that the rigorous 90-minute set was all Cuban music, or a singularly Cubanized version of jazz. There was a small group combining various musical languages, which has always happened under the banner of jazz, although this group did more combining than most, including elements of Andalusian flamenco, Venezuelan joropo, Cuban son and American jazz. It had a tricky instrumentation to do that with: flute, harp, piano, bass and drums. And it included a great Cuban musician not often heard in New York, the flutist Orlando Valle, known as Maraca.

Let’s start with what it was not. Friday’s concert didn’t turn into a jam session, and it didn’t become merely a showcase for the two front-line soloists, Mr. Valle — an alumnus of the dynastic Cuban band Irakere — and the Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda. Either kind of concert might have been enough for most listeners, because the abilities of those two musicians come at you like landslides. Mr. Valle’s improvising on flute can intimate several people playing at once: a concatenation of virtuosic lines piling up, colliding, billowing outward. And Mr. Castaneda can effectively turn the harp into a guitar, a piano or a percussion instrument. He makes fine details and slashing attacks; he plucks the strings so hard that they twang.

So what was it? It was a group organized by Jazz at Lincoln Center, planned well in advance but realized at the last minute, with two days’ rehearsal. Each of the five members contributed original compositions: Mr. Valle and Mr. Castaneda, as well as the New York-based Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon; the bassist Luques Curtis, from Hartford, a jazz musician who has played for years with the Afro-Latin bandleader Eddie Palmieri; and Daniel Freedman, from New York City, a drummer whose interests have taken him to study in Cuba, Mali and the Middle East. (There were old alliances within the group: Mr. Freedman and Mr. Curtis had played together before, as had Mr. Castaneda and Mr. Simon.)


There was a taut balance in the dimensions of the music — surprisingly so, given the short rehearsal time and the multiple changes of form and rhythm in every piece. The harp and flute solos were offset by Mr. Simon’s elegant, muted-dynamics playing; he made you feel his harmonic choices and his rhythmic emphasis while rarely raising his hands off the keys. Mr. Curtis has a resonant, intense sound, and Mr. Freedman has a clear and specific one, but they made their approaches mesh.

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/arts/music/cuban-music-and-more-at-jazz-at-lincoln-center.html