On Thursday, July 1, 2021, the Cuban Jazz Syndicate participated in the 44th Getxo International Jazz Festival, in a Muxikebarri that sold out its 391 pandemic seats in advance sales (at 12 euros, huh?). That afternoon, in a sextet when the soft, sensual and whispering singer Miryam Latrece participated, 7 pieces were performed in 109 minutes that made sense when all the musicians played at the same time and reserved enough space for individual solos. And this Tuesday, in the third season of the monthly cycle ‘BJC Arriagan’ (Bilbaína Jazz Club in the Arriaga, it always falls on a Tuesday), 444 people gathered at the theater (for €21, and the normal capacity had to be increased! ) and the Cubans residing in Madrid performed in a sextet without Latrece (numerically she was replaced by the percussionist Yuvisney Aguilar) and with the original trumpeter Carlos Sarduy (who could not come to Getxo and was replaced by the Frenchman Reynald Colom).
The Arriaga concert was very similar, although shorter: 6 pieces in 82 minutes. There was also a profusion of solos, and although at times it seemed not to be filling but rather an exhibition of virtuosity to show off in an inbred way to other jazz musicians, in the end the solos acquired substance and reason for being, which is what happened in the one starring the electric bassist Yarel Hernández, in the Afro-Cuban prologue and orisha by Yuvisney Aguilar that, starting from the tourist scene, became jondo (Yuvisney had rattlesnake percussion on one calf) and also in a solo by the tenor saxophone of Ariel Brínguez that grew from the oriental Cuban to world jazz (Ariel, the musician we have seen the most in recent years, is a regular at the Bilbaína Jazz Club and performs in different formations).
Ariel Brínguez listening to Carlitos Sarduy.
duck castaneda
Inspired by all the Cuban jazz unionists (this is not a vertical union, since they are all exiles from the communist island), Tuesday’s event went undulating with its ups and downs and with some downturns to recover our breath, or serenity as he said the leader Michael Olivera, the drummer, the only one who didn’t do any individual solo!, who defined himself as ‘altered’ by emotion. The sextet opened impressively, breaking the percussive corduroy with ‘Para Tito Puente’ (with a very Danilo Pérez piano solo from unionist Pepe Rivero), letting themselves be carried away by the melodies of ‘Mozambique’ (in the solos they went beyond the fusion of bassist Yarel to the cool of the trumpeter Sarduy), and reaching the top of the event in ‘Bolero danzóngo’, a composition with traces of songo, danzón and chachachá, as explained by the leader Olivera, who said that Miryam Latrece was announced in the program but that he was going to taste this song, that we be understanding, and he sang it with tumbao and authenticity in the style of Benny Moré (and in the epilogue of the piece he asked for the participation of the respectable in his “simple and therapeutic chorus”).
After Yuvisney Aguilar’s percussionist moment in ‘Obatalá’, the name of the Cuban deity of peace, “a dose of Afro-Cuban essence that our ancestors have left us”, Pepe Rivero shone in the solo proem of ‘Pa Bebo’, with stops in ragtime, Broadway, chamber music. Here, after the introit with the personality of the masterful Rivero, the band added more and more with oriental saxophone, solo cha-cha-chá trumpeter and another conjunction of drums and percussion both at the same time, before the fleeting encore whose title Olivera did not present and which went from falsettos to choir with the public to the great American jazz.
And that was more or less the third concert of the six that make up the third cycle ‘BJC Arriagan’. Three more remain: on April 25 with the also Cuban Vistel Brothers (Jorge on trumpet and Maikel on saxophone representing their album ‘Fiesta en El Batey’, from 2022); on May 2, the Maureen Choi Qu4rtet led by a violinist of Korean descent born in Michigan and based in Madrid since 2012 (she replaces the Danish Pierre Dørge New Jungle Orchestra); and will close the season on Tuesday June 6 another Danish project, the extended Jesper Bodilsen Trio with saxophonist and vocalist Mads Mathias, a crooner.