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Chucho Valdés: Irakere 40 Launch U.S. Tour in Fall 2015 to Celebrate Legendary Afro-Cuban Jazz Group;
Valdés and His Newly Expanded Afro-Cuban Messengers Honor Irakere’s Groundbreaking Work;
Concerts at LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall (with special guest Eddie Palmieri), SFJAZZ Center, Fillmore
Miami Beach, NYC’s Town Hall, and more;
New CD “Live at Marciac” Out November 13 on Jazz Village/harmonia mundi
Chucho Valdés: Irakere 40 – 2015 Tour
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Oct 20
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Oct 27
Oct 29
Oct 30
Oct 31
Nov 1
Nov 4
Nov 6
Nov 7
Nov 8
Nov 10
Nov 12
Nov 13
Nov 14
Nov 15
Nov 16
Los Angeles, CA
Tucson, AZ
Scottsdale, AZ
Roehnert Park, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
Columbia, MO
Chicago, IL
Holland, MI
Ann Arbor, MI
New York, NY
Boston, MA
San Juan, PR
Miami Beach, FL
Bethesda, MD
Durham, NC
Walt Disney Concert Hall (with special guest Eddie Palmieri)
Fox Tucson Theatre
Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts
Sonoma State University / Green Music Center
Rio Theatre for the Performing Arts
SFJAZZ Center
SFJAZZ Center
SFJAZZ Center
SFJAZZ Center
Missouri Theatre
Symphony Center Orchestra Hall
Hope College / Dimnent Memorial Chapel
Michigan Theater
The Town Hall
Berklee Performance Center
Centro de Bellas Artes
Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater
The Music Center at Strathmore
Duke Performances / Page Auditorium
The Chucho Valdés: Irakere 40 tour is a celebration of Irakere, the Cuban 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.
But this 2015 tour also plays as a summing up of the extraordinary contributions of five-time Grammy and
three-time Latin Grammy-winning pianist, composer and bandleader Jesús “Chucho” Valdés, Irakere’s
founder, main composer and arranger.
In conjunction with the U.S. tour, Chucho Valdés: Irakere 40 will be releasing Live at Marciac (Jazz
Village/harmonia mundi) on November 13th. The label also released Valdés´s previous release, Border-Free
(2013) featuring his current group, The Afro-Cuban Messengers.
The young Messengers grew up in Cuba listening to the music of Irakere — something that became a defining
element for this project.
Leading a ten-piece ensemble comprising the Messengers expanded with three trumpets and two saxophones,
Valdés offers a vivid retrospective of his work the past four decades. It is also a wide angle view of the evolution of
Afro-Cuban jazz as the program includes classics of Irakere´s repertoire such as “Misa Negra” “Estela Va A
Estallar” (“Stella By Starlight”), ”Juana 1600,” and “Bacalao Con Pan,” but also more recent compositions,
originally performed with the Messengers, in new arrangements, such as “Yansa,” “Abdel” and “Lorena’s Tango.”
“In our first rehearsal of the old pieces with this band I cried,” says Chucho, who will be 74 on October 9. “When I
decided to do a tribute to that marvelous band, I also decided I didn’t want to do it with the charter members but
with players from the generations of musicians that grew up and learned from Irakere. I thought it would be more
meaningful. It’s a tribute from one generation to another.”
Chucho actually started Irakere in 1973 by recruiting some of his fellow players, and main soloists, in the
Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. This all-star large ensemble had been organized in 1967 to play jazz and
pop, in part as an official response to the global musical earthquake started by The Beatles.
In 1973, the budding Irakere, then still a band-within-a-band, recorded “Bacalao Con Pan,” a very innovative, high
energy, danceable piece that foreshadowed a style that would become known years later as timba. The song was
the band’s first major hit.
In 1975, Irakere became a self-standing band. It remained active until 2005.
“Irakere represented for me a chance to put into practice all those ideas I had since I was a music student,” says
Chucho, who was the band’s main composer and arranger. “And that included anything, from how to mix the
ritual Afro-Cuban drums and rhythms with jazz, to how to have the sound of a ‘small’ big band and how to
structure the pieces.”
Dionisio Jesús “Chucho” Valdés Rodriguez learned piano and the sound of a big band studying and playing
with his father, the great pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Bebo Valdés. But in time, looking for “small
groups that sounded bigger than they were,” Chucho’s references became Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
and Horace Silver´s quintets — and then he heard Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Chucho recalls someone bringing BS&T’s self-titled second album to a rehearsal of the Orquesta in Havana and
how “the whole orchestra gathered around and listened — and we flipped out,” he says. “It was a small band that
sounded like a big band. I had been looking for that sound for years.”
The discovery of Irakere by American audiences began with a chance encounter in 1977 when, in the first
official visit of Americans to Cuba since the Missile Crisis, a jazz cruise ship carrying musicians including Dizzy
Gillespie, Stan Getz and a young Ry Cooder dropped anchor in Havana. They heard the group, were bowled
over by the writing and virtuosic playing and, back in the US, recommended Irakere to the late Bruce Lundvall,
then President of CBS Records. Months later, Lundvall visited Cuba, heard the group in a concert/audition,
signed it on the spot and booked it at the Newport Jazz Festival in New York City.
On June 28, 1978, Chucho Valdés and Irakere burst onto the global stage.
That evening, the Newport Jazz Festival’s bill at Carnegie Hall was “Three Pianos and Two Guitars,” featuring
Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Mary Lou Williams on pianos; and Larry Coryell and Phillip Catherine on
guitars. Irakere appeared unannounced, at the end of the night. In his review for The New York Times, critic John
S. Wilson wrote that, “by the end of the evening, [the headliners] had almost been forgotten in the wake of an
unannounced added attraction — Irakere, an 11 piece group from Cuba that had just been brought to New York
by Columbia Records.”
A few months later, an album simply titled Irakere and including tracks drawn from the Carnegie Hall debut and a
later show at the Montreux Jazz Festival, won the GRAMMY for Best Latin Recording.
In the years since, several charter members of Irakere, most notably saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and trumpeter
Arturo Sandoval, have gone on to become leading music figures in their own right. In fact, emulating Blakey’s
Messengers, Irakere became a rolling graduate school of Afro-Cuban jazz.
Throughout, one of Irakere‘s remarkable characteristics was that the group followed and maintained two parallel
musical tracks: jazz experimentation and dance music hits. Their shows, especially in Cuba, often featured a first
part focused on jazz and a second half dedicated to dancers.
“We never were a dance group. We were a jazz group,” says Chucho of Irakere. “But jazz in Cuba had a limited
audience so we started playing dance music to attract new audiences for what we were doing — and it worked
incredibly well. I always thought that the people who came to hear us wanted to hear good music, good
arrangements, good soloing, something different. So in our concerts we aimed to please those who came to hear
jazz […] But there was another audience that was just waiting to dance to ‘Bacalao Con Pan’. We played jazz and
we wanted to have fun. And that’s what we want to do on this current tour.”
But an active creator such as Valdés wouldn´t be happy settling for nostalgia. He is particularly proud of his young
Afro-Cuban Messengers and how they continue to challenge him and push the music forward. The results can be
clearly heard in Chucho Valdés: Irakere 40.
“In the original Irakere, the rhythm section was the foundation and we had a spectacular brass and wind section,
with great soloists,” recalls Chucho. “Perhaps Irakere in its first period depended more on the virtuosity of its
players than the arranging. When some of those musicians left, then I really had to put pencil to paper, replace
great individual talents with more of a group sound. Now I have an extraordinary rhythm section that’s not only a
foundation but a show in itself and I’m using them more as soloists. We have very, very strong brass and wind
sections and the writing is more detailed. It’s all more balanced. It makes the music new again.”
CHUCHO VALDES: IRAKERE 40 – LINEUP
Chucho Valdés (Piano)
Gastón Joya (Bass)
Rodney Barreto (Drums)
Yaroldy Abreu (Percussion)
Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé (Batás & Vocals)
Manuel Machado (Trumpet)
Reinaldo Melián (Trumpet)
Carlos Sarduy (Trumpet)
Ariel Bringuez (Tenor Sax)
Rafael Àguila (Alto Sax)
Concert review in THE GUARDIAN
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/22/chucho-valdes-irakere-review-ronni-scotts-cuban-hurricaneof-brass-and-bata
VIDEO from Lugano Jazz Festival 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHVPSEZRIao