Biography

Winner of six GRAMMY® and three Latin GRAMMY® Awards, the Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz.

A protean performer, as comfortable offering solo performances as leading small and large ensembles, his most recent project, Jazz Batá 2, is an exceptional work in which he revisits an idea he first explored in 1972: a piano jazz trio featuring batá drums in place of the conventional trap set. The batá are the sacred, hourglass shaped drums used in the ritual music of the Yoruba religion, better known as Santeria. Released on November 16, 2018, Jazz Batá 2 marks Chucho’s debut on Mack Avenue Records.

A few days earlier, on November 13, Chucho received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences™ in a ceremony held during Latin GRAMMY week in Las Vegas. Chucho was also inducted in the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a DC Jazz Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, his name joining an illustrious list that includes Kenny Barron, James Moody, Ellis Marsalis, George Wein, and Dave Brubeck. Also, Chucho enjoyed another type of honor, personally satisfying as pianist and performer, as he debuted in the historic Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, last March.

Finally, in August, Chucho and pianist, composer and educator Rebeca Mauleón presented “Decoding Afro-Cuban Jazz:  The Music of Chucho Valdés & Irakere” (213 pages, Sher Music Co.) This tome includes an overview of Cuban music; biographical information; and a history of Chucho’s Irakere, a band that, with its bold fusion of Afro-Cuban ritual music, popular Afro- Cuban music styles, jazz and rock, marked a before and after in Latin jazz. The book also includes lead sheets of 11 of Chucho´s most notable compositions, including classics such as ”Misa Negra,” “Mambo Influenciado,” and “Bacalao Con Pan,” and a glossary of terms and Afro-Cuban rhythms.

A very active performer, in early 2018 Chucho completed a two-year tour with Trance, a two-piano duo project. Trancerepresented a dramatic change of sound for Chucho, as it followed the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the birth of Irakere, a group that for all intents and purposes, suggested a small big band. The extensive tour was highlighted by a live recording,Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac  (Jazz Village / Comanche Music), which won a Grammy for the Best Latin Jazz Album in 2016.

Born in a family of musicians in Quivicán, Havana province, Cuba, on October 9, 1941, Dionisio Jesús "Chucho" Valdés Rodríguez, has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock and more, into an organic, personal style that has both, a distinct style and substance. His first teacher was his father, the great pianist, composer and bandleader Ramón “Bebo” Valdés. By the age of three, Chucho was already playing the melodies he heard on the radio at the piano, using both hands and in any key. He began taking lessons on piano, theory and solfege at the age of five and continued his formal musical education at the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de la Habana, from which he graduated at 14. A year later, he formed his first jazz trio and in 1959 he debuted with the orchestra Sabor de Cuba, directed by his father. Sabor de Cuba is considered one of the great orchestras in modern Cuban music history. As it turns out, Chucho is perhaps best known as the founder, pianist and main composer and arranger of yet another landmark ensemble in Cuban music: Irakere (1973-2005). Not well known outside Cuba, Irakere was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie, who was visiting Havana on a jazz cruise, in 1977. The following year, producer Bruce Lundvall, then president of CBS, went to Cuba on Dizzy´s advice, heard the band live and signed it on the spot.

The same year Irakere debuted, unannounced, as “surprise guests,” at Carnegie Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. Selections from that performance were later included in Irakere (CBS), the band’s debut recording in the United States. The album won a Grammy as Best Latin Recording in 1979. That original band featured future global jazz stars such as Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval, but over its rich, long life, Irakere became a rolling university of Afro-Cuban music while also featuring influential musicians such as the late Miguel “Angá” Díaz; Jose Luis Cortés (who would later found NG La Banda) and Germán Velazco.

Chucho stayed with Irakere until 2005.

Through the many changes the band experienced over the years, he remained the one, essential constant. But Irakere’s success had its personal costs, as Chucho’s talent as a pianist was largely obscured by his responsibilities as a leader.

In 1998 — having won his second Grammy the previous year for Habana (Verve), this time as a member of trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s group Crisol — Chucho launched a parallel career as a solo player and small-group leader.

An enormously fruitful period followed, highlighted by albums such as Solo Piano (Blue Note, 1991), Solo: Live in New York (Blue Note, 2001) and New Conceptions (Blue Note, 2003), as well as quartet recordings such as Bele Bele en La Habana (Blue Note, 1998), Briyumba Palo Congo (Blue Note, 1999) and Live at the Village Vanguard(Blue Note, 2000), which won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.

Since, Chucho also won Grammys for Juntos Para Siempre (Calle 54, 2007), the duet recording with his father, Bebo; and for Chucho’s Steps (Comanche, 2010), which introduced his new group, the Afro-Cuban Messengers.

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Discography

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Chucho ValdÉs Jazz Bata 2
(Mack Avenue Records, 2018)
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Chucho Valdés Jazz Bata 2 

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ONCE
(Patricia Sosa + Chucho Valdés )
Concierto para dos.Comanche 2017)

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Chucho Valdés
Tributo a IRAKERE
Comanche/Harmonia Mundi, 2016)
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Border Free
(Comanche/Harmonia Mundi, 2013)
Chucho Valdés & The Afro-Cuban  Messengers

News

Chucho Valdés announces Jazz Batá, a new project with old roots



Jazz Batá, the new project of pianist, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés, is both a look forward and a closing of pending business.

Comprised by Valdés on piano; Yelsy Heredia, acoustic bass and Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé, also a member of Valdé's Afro-Cuban Jazz Messengers, on percussion and voice, Jazz Batá retakes a project that, while largely ignored at the time, proved crucial for the development of Valdés music.

Originally created by Valdés in 1972, a year before he founded the transcendent Afro-Cuban jazz rock ensemble Irakere, Jazz Batá comprised piano, acoustic bass and percussion, specially batá, the hourglass shaped drum that is essential in the ritual music of Yoruba religion, best known as Santeria. In its instrumentation and its sound, Jazz Batá expressed Valdés´s search for the roots of Afro-Cuban music and his deeper Cubanization of jazz and the classic piano jazz trio.

“The recording company couldn’t understand it. They would tell me that it was ‘crazy jazz,’” he recalled. “They would say ‘Who thinks of a jazz trio without a drum kit?’ Well, I did. I was looking for the sound of our roots. The batá drums were not used in popular music then. Those drums, that music, were considered vulgar, something backward. Some dismissed it as just ´A black thing.´ But that´s where our roots are.”

The trio recorded only one album, but the idea “stayed with me,” explained the pianist and composer. “It really bothered me not to follow through with the work in Jazz Batá and I was listening to it recently and thought there was a lot there yet. At the time, we chose to follow another path — and Irakere was a great project.”
“The band Irakere is an outgrowth of the work on Jazz Batá,” said Valdés, who noted that one the most distinctive pieces on the record was titled “Irakere.”

In fact, he credits the sound of songs such as “Bacalao Con Pan,” Irakere’s first great hit, today considered a classic in Cuban popular music, to his experimentations with the trio.

“That was a hit that became an anthem and, to this day, even more than 40 years later people still requests it,” said Valdés. “And it was the breakthrough for African percussion in Cuban dance music.”

“The repertoire of Jazz Batá is made of almost all new music,” he announced. “After all, while we are based on that original trio, we are doing something very different here. There are years of experiences and development in between. I believe this is going to be even better than the old trio.”

Beginning on April, 2018, Jazz Batá will perform in the United States and Europe. The trio plans to enter the studio to record at the end of the tour.