Chucho Valdés "His main dreams have come true, but he continues to dream." Photos by Pavel Korbut

Multiple Grammy Award-winning Cuban pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Chucho Valdez is a key figure in Afro-Cuban jazz over the past 50 years.

Multiple Grammy Award-winning Cuban pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Chucho Valdez is a key figure in Afro-Cuban jazz over the past 50 years.

Chucho (real name Jesus Dionisio Valdez) was born in 1941 in the small Cuban town of Quivican. His father, Ramon "Bebo" Valdez, was a renowned pianist and leader of the famous orchestra of Havana's Tropicana Club. Already at the age of 3, Chucho could select by ear melodies that he heard on the radio. At the age of 14, he graduated from the Havana Conservatory, and a year later he performed with his first jazz trio. Numerous concerts with the Sabor de Cuba orchestra, led by his father, became a musical university for the young man.

In 1964, Valdez began recording as a soloist and leader of a group that included saxophonist Paquito de Rivera, trombonist Alberto Giral, flautist Julio Vento, guitarist Carlos Emilio Morales, double bassist Quique Hernandez, percussionists Emilio del Monte and Oscar Valdez Jr. In 1967, Chucho and some of the ensemble members became the founders of the famous jazz group - Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna.

In 1972, Chucho released the album Jazz Batá, where African rhythms are mixed with Cuban dance music. This combination will become the stylistic basis for the musician’s new group – the cult jazz band Irakere. With the creation of this group in 1973, the entire history of Afro-Cuban jazz is divided into a time of “before” and “after”. A small big band with a vibrant blend of jazz, rock, classical, Afro-Cuban and traditional Cuban music, Irakere was discovered in 1977 by Dizzy Gillespie during his visit to Havana. In 1978, influential American producer Bruce Lundvall signed a contract with the group, and a year later the musicians received their first Grammy for an album called Live at Newport. Subsequently, the group created a unique discography, including such popular recordings as Tierra En Trance (1983), Misa Negra (1987), Homenaje a Beny More (1989), Babalu Aye (1999). For more than 30 years, Chucho was the pianist, conductor, composer and arranger of this legendary ensemble.

In 1998, Chucho Valdez received a second Grammy Award for an album called Havana (in an ensemble with trumpeter Roy Hargrove and the group Crisol), which included Chucho's original compositions - Mambo para Roy and Mr. Bruce. The third prize was received for the album Live at the Village Vanguard (2000).

Since 2005, he has focused on his solo career, performing as a pianist and leader of small groups. He received the next Grammy for the album Juntos Para Siempre (Calle 54, 2007), recorded in a duet with his father “Bebe” Valdez, and the disc Chucho's Steps (Comanche, 2010), which presented his new group Afro- Cuban Messengers He won his last Grammy in 2017 for the disc Tribute to Irakere, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the legendary group.

At the Moscow concert, part of the musician’s world tour, the greatest Maestro will present a program of all the best that has accumulated over more than forty years of career, and will successfully demonstrate his phenomenal technique.

He began learning to play the piano at the age of three and listened to jazz from an early age, primarily Art Tatum And Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller.

“I was privileged. Thanks to my father, I personally met Erroll Garner, Sarah Vaughn, Nat King Cole... It was simply magical, can you imagine how these meetings changed my life?

While still a teenager, he assembled his first jazz trio, with which he constantly performed on the club stages of Havana, which at that time had a rich nightlife. Chucho also played in the orchestra Sabor de Cuba, which was led by his father.

“My father taught me everything about Cuban music, South American music, jazz, and he also taught me how to work in an orchestra.”

But after the 1959 revolution, nightlife stopped, he emigrated (he would meet him only 18 years later). Chucho immersed himself in studies of Cuban music and musical classics at the University of the Arts in Havana. During the 1960s, including working with the Havana Musical Theater Orchestra, he developed his own unique style, in which classical, Cuban and jazz merge into a consistent unity. In 1970, his ensemble became the first jazz group based in Cuba to officially perform outside of Liberty Island (at the festival "Jazz Jamboree" in Warsaw).

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At the same time, Chucho worked in "Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna", a youth academic orchestra that has played numerous premieres of works by contemporary Cuban composers. And in 1973, these two directions merged for him: together with the saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera he, at the age of 32, became a co-founder of the first composition of the legendary ensemble “Irakere”, which emerged from the members of the “Cuban Orchestra of Contemporary Music”. The innovative fusion of Cuban traditional and modern music, jazz, jazz-rock and sophisticated modern harmony made this group perhaps the main “export product” of Cuban culture in the second half of the 70s.

In 1980, as part of "Irakere" Valdez received his first Grammy Award. The stars of the group’s first lineup left it long ago: D’Rivera emigrated to the USA, the trumpeter created his own band and also emigrated, but Chucho Valdez continues to be the leader of “Irakere” and still performs and records with this famous group from time to time.

Unlike other Cuban stars, Chucho Valdez never left his native country and still lives in Havana, where he runs an annual jazz festival and generally works a lot. At the same time, he manages to maintain a noticeable presence on the world stage, tours extensively around the world and releases jazz albums on major labels: for example, from 1998 to 2008, his records were released on Blue Note. Chucho also became a Latin Grammy winner (2009) with the album "Juntos Para Siempre", recorded with his father, Bebo Valdez. He treats his father with great trepidation: “He will always remain my idol...”

Chucho Valdez [Spanish] Chucho Valdés, full name Jesus Dionisio Valdés (Spanish: Jesús Dionisio Valdés); genus. October 9, 1941, Quiwican, Cuba - Cuban pianist, composer and arranger.

The musician was born in Cuba. His father is the famous pianist Bebo Valdez, who emigrated from the country immediately after the revolution and regime change. Father and son had not seen each other for 18 years, and after the meeting they began working together: they gave concerts and recorded the album “Together Forever” (“Juntos para siempre”, 2008). This album received a Grammy in 2009.

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“At 76 years old, the great Afro-Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés has many projects and hopes, sometimes unexpected, such as “spending a whole year playing only classical music.”

“This is not my path, but it would give me great pleasure,” says the creator and inspirer of the famous group Irakere, which he left several years ago in order to pursue a solo career, in an interview with the Spanish agency EFE.

Chucho Valdez arrived in Moscow. Tonight he will give a concert here, organized by the RAMMUSIC agency. This concert takes place as part of the maestro’s tour of Europe, and is, to some extent, a return to origins, since it was in this city that the international musical career of Chucho Valdez began half a century ago.

“Exactly 50 years ago my first visit to Moscow took place. This happened in August 1968. My international career started here. It was here that I left Cuba for the first time,” says the great jazzman.

“To play in this hall, where the great pianists I admire, my idols, have performed in, is simply a dream come true,” he says as he takes the stage.

Just a few days ago, the maestro delighted audiences by playing four hands in Vienna and Hamburg with another great Cuban musician, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, who is touring Europe with him. But today in Moscow, Chucho Valdez is alone at the piano, in front of more than 1,500 spectators, playing his only solo concert.

“I will take an excursion into the history of music through improvisation with classical, Afro-Cuban music and jazz. It will be the music of Monk, Duke Ellington, my own, Chopin, Russian composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov or Tchaikovsky, and Cuban rumba."

Playing all this for him is a dream come true. And Chucho Valdez, winner of nine Grammy awards, already has two new projects spinning in his head.

“Over the next two years, I plan to release a new CD and a series of presentations of bata jazz, which is something like Afro-Cuban jazz, music with an original rhythm and influence of Yoruba chants. And in 2020 I will do a project called “Chucho and Symphonic Music”, a concert with a symphony orchestra - this is another dream that should come true.”

It seems that the maestro never needs rest. His zest for life, vibrant energy and versatility of interests are incredible. And therefore, another plan is “to devote some time, for example, a year, only to classical music concerts.”

“I don’t have an exact date yet, it’s a dream that I hope to fulfill once I get my first two projects done. Only classics: Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Ravel... I studied this particular music as a child, and now I miss it,” the musician laughs.

Indeed, classical music has always been present in Valdez's life, as in the historic concert he gave in October 2015 in Havana's Cathedral Square with Chinese pianist Lang-Lang and the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba.

But if Chucho’s future projects are varied and numerous, then the main task of his past life boiled down to one thing:

“The disc we recorded with my father, Bebo Valdez, is “Together Forever.” This was the last disc in his life, and this was our joint main dream, which we managed to fulfill.”

The disc, released in 2007, was the culmination of an incredible reunion between Chucho and his father after decades of separation after Bebo Valdez was forced to leave Cuba in 1960.

“This is an incredible disc. The relationship between father and son, teacher and student, is something very deep for both of us. We met after separation and got to work,” says the maestro about the album, which received a World Grammy Award and a Latin American Grammy Award.

“We gave many concerts, played as a duet, and sometimes together with my quartet. Working with my father was a reward for me,” recalls with nostalgia the son of the legendary Bebo, who died in 2013 at the age of 94.

“I always remember him, sometimes I feel his presence nearby... He was an amazing man, and I am proud to be his son.”

When asked if Bebo can be compared to anyone as a musician and as a person, Chucho, without hesitation, replies: “No one can even come close to him.”

Chucho is also proud of his own children, who, of course, inherited the family talent for music.

“The oldest, Chuchito, is an amazing pianist. Emilio is a very talented drummer. Yausi, my eldest daughter, studied choral conducting and also plays the drums. My daughter Leianis is a pianist, my son Jesse is a composer and drummer, and Julian, the youngest, who is 11 years old, wants to play reggaeton.”

Chucho shrugs: “Well, if that’s what he wants... I can’t say anything against reggaeton,” he says, smiling.

After Moscow and a short rest at his home in Malaga, where the maestro will spend a couple of days with his wife Lorena, Chucho Valdez will continue his tour in Madrid (a concert will take place at the Auditorio Nacional on March 19) and Seville (March 20, the Lope de Vega Theater). After that he will go to Italy."

Text provided by the tour organizers http://www.rammusic.ru/

Photos by Pavel Korbut