CUBAN SPONTANEITY

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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I just listened for the third time to ESPONTANEO (Ansonica ar0011), a CD which Ansonica Records recorded at the Abdala Studio just outside Havana this past year.

It features three awesomely talented Cuban musicians, starting with the mega-guitarist Dayron Ortega Guzman alternating with the recently “discovered” tres player Maykel Elizarde. Eduardo Silveira is the unflagging percussionist who provides the driving rhythm for all nine tracks on this CD.

The three friends have much in common, starting with the spontaneity of the album’s title. They also have unending energy that flows throughout the album’s selection of congas, boleros, mambos, and puntos guajiros, all traditional Cuban musical forms into which the three musicians inject a wonderfully laid back improvisatory feel.

In Influencia, a Brazilian chorinho, Elizarde creates dazzling filigree work on his tres. He again gets a favored spot when he closes the CD with a fabulous five minute improvisation at times redolent of Andean music.

The tunes flow, traveling from the urban sound of the now melancholy, now jazzy Mambo Influenciado of Chucho Valdés to the old country classic zapateado Jugando con la Nota. The legendary Fajardo y sus Estrellas provides the familiar Guajireando.

Track 4 features an impressively improvised nine minute long tour de force for the three musicians who get to engage in a competitive but lovingly friendly musical mano a mano.

This is as they say in Spanish for emphasis, punto y aparte one of the best albums of Cuban music I have heard in quite some time. Co-produced by Ortega Guzman and Ansonia’s Bob Lord, and engineered with clarity by José Raul Varona, Espontaneo is a keeper.

Rafael de Acha

http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”