The Official Blog of Gonzalo Rubalcaba

Chicago Tribune

Two concert grands. Two colossal virtuosos. One indelible evening.

Howard Reich Contact Reporter

Granted, listeners who packed Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center on Friday evening already had high hopes for Cuban piano masters Chucho Valdes and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, judging by the long and raucous ovation that greeted them before they played a note.

But their music exceeded expectations, and not because the pianists played faster, louder or more brilliantly than their reputations suggested. No, it was the clarity, balance, sensitivity and tonal sheen of their work that made this a model of what two-piano improvisation can be — but rarely is. Add to that the well-established wizardry of their technical achievements and the Afro-Cuban pulse of all the music they played (albeit at widely varying tempos), and you had an avalanche of piano virtuosity on a level rarely attained.

Had Valdes and Rubalcaba been paid by the note, they could have retired when they left the auditorium (not that they would have wanted to).

Amid the keyboard fireworks and profoundly stated musical ideas, another theme was at play: a dialogue between pianists of two generations, both born and nurtured in Cuba and now living within minutes of each other in Florida. The tug between their distinct concepts of harmony and musical structure enriched their dialogue, the audience hearing 76-year-old Valdes and 54-year-old Rubalcaba viewing Afro-Cuban tradition from distinct perspectives.

And yet they matched tone and touch so closely that from the evening’s first selection, Rubalcaba’s “Joan,” you sometimes couldn’t tell which pianist had begun a solo without looking. As the music segued between the two, each replicated the timbre of the other, a feat far more difficult to achieve than they made it appear.

“Joan” opened as a lullaby, Rubalcaba’s softly stated legato lines not hinting at the storms yet to come. Valdes entered the proceedings by echoing what he’d heard, the two pianists intertwining lines as if from a single instrument and sensibility. It’s in transparent passages such as these that duo pianists reveal their strengths and shortcomings. And it was obvious that these musicians felt rhythm in sync, thereby avoiding the painfully common ker-plunk effect of two musicians struggling to nail downbeats simultaneously.

During one of Valdes’ solos in “Joan,” he quoted a composer he would return to throughout the evening: George Gershwin, this time with a few phrases from the first movement of the Concerto in F. When Valdes played them, he looked up and smiled, as if half-surprised that Gershwin suddenly would assert himself in the midst of the music-making.

Valdes’ “Mambo Influenciado” not only lived up to its title but offered the pianists an opportunity to produce showers of notes at remarkable velocity. Playing zillions of pitches quickly, however, is not an art. Doing so from two pianos, while maintaining the clarity of each note and sustaining utter transparency of ensemble sound, is. For in this piece, and others, Valdes and Rubalcaba took pains to work in different registers of their respective keyboards and to otherwise avoid too-thick blocks of sound. Thus the music proved texturally lucid no matter how fast and furiously these 20 fingers were flying.

As the evening developed, however, distinctions between the pianists’ work became increasingly clear. Valdes conjured herculean, Art Tatum-like technique in Valdes’ “Punto Cubano,” while Rubalcaba offered a light, sleek, even-keeled approach to high-speed passagework. And though Valdes punctuated bebop-tinged chord progressions with bursts of keyboard dissonance, Rubalcaba continuously pushed into provocative, unfamiliar harmonic regions. Both, however, reveled in quoting from the history of Western music, Valdes offering snippets of “Flight of the Bumblebee” and “Ritual Fire Dance,” Rubalcaba responding with a bit of Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz and the jazz standard “Mona Lisa.”

Valdes tipped his hat again to Tatum in playing solo on “Over the Rainbow,” at times reharmonizing it via immense, Rachmaninoff-like chords. Once again, Gershwin appeared, this time with quotations from “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Rubalcaba’s solo version of “El Manisero” (“The Peanut Vendor”) illuminated the searching quality of his approach, the pianist constantly shifting tempo, sabotaging patterns and venturing into rarefied harmony. It’s not an overstatement to say that Rubalcaba’s most technically ambitious passages here evoked Vladimir Horowitz, a comparison one does not make lightly.

The two pianists made a fantasy of the “Gitanerias” movement of Ernesto Lecuona’s “Andalucia” suite, creating vast new melodic and harmonic structures upon it. And who could sit still during the surging energy they gathered in Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” Rubalcaba’s jazz countermelodies and Valdes’ Gershwin-like repeated notes riding an unstoppable rhythmic pulse?

This was duo jazz pianism cast as high art, a rare occurrence indeed.

Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.

hreich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @howardreich

John Fordham

Sunday 12 November 2017 06.48 EST

Chucho Valdés/Gonzalo Rubalcaba review – Cuban wizards conjure a pulsating piano stampede

LE LUNDI 20/11/2017 À 20H30  –  LA SEINE MUSICALE  – BOULOGNE BILLANCOURT –***ouverture des portes à 19h30***

Il y a peu de duos de pianos dans l’histoire du jazz et des musiques afro-caribéennes. L’exercice présente le risque de la surenchère de notes, de l’empiètement intempestif, d’une écoute de l’autre insuffisante. Dans ce mikado passionnant qui unit deux protagonistes et 176 touches réparties égalitairement sur deux claviers, les élus doivent être humbles, inspirés et respectueux. C’est à ce prix là que la rencontre peut s’avérer magique. Tel est le but poursuivi par deux maîtres du piano, deux étoiles incontestables du latin jazz : Chucho Valdés et Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Comme son titre le laisse deviner, « Trance » est une collaboration profondément liée aux forces spirituelles qui traversent la musique. Le titre évoque également l’art de la conversation musicale que possèdent ces deux improvisateurs et compositeurs dont l’amitié -et l’admiration mutuelle- remontent à plusieurs décennies.

Plus connu sans doute pour avoir été le fondateur, leader et compositeur/arrangeur du célèbre groupe de jazz-rock afro-cubain Irakere, Chucho Valdés s’est depuis 2005 concentré sur sa carrière solo, révélant ses talents de pianiste et de meneur de petits ensembles. Gonzalo Rubalcaba, qui a grandi en écoutant Chucho, a fait irruption sur la scène jazz internationale dans les années 80 avec Grupo Proyecto, un groupe de jazz-fusion afro-cubain explosif. Au début des années 90, ses performances époustouflantes en tant que meneur d’un trio mettant en scène le contrebassiste Charlie Haden et le batteur Paul Motian l’ont établi parmi les pianistes de jazz les plus inspirés. Par ailleurs, ses duos avec le contrebassiste précité figurent parmi les bijoux les mieux ciselés du jazz moderne, salués encore récemment par la critique.

« Notre duo entretient une relation historique avec la tradition cubaine du piano, fait remarquer Chucho ; c’est ce qui donne à ce projet quelque chose de très particulier, tel un son qui a émergé naturellement, organiquement. Nos deux pianos jouent déjà comme un seul. »
De son côté, Gonzalo ajoute qu’« il aurait été facile de prendre quelques classiques et de les interpréter, mais nous voulions quelque chose de spécial. Nous écrivons tous deux de la musique pour piano et aimons réinventer des airs qui vont des succès populaires et classiques du répertoire cubain à la musique de Thelonious Monk. »

Ce duo de seigneurs est présenté en exclusivité et pour la première fois en France à l’auditorium de La Seine Musicale.

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, August 1, 2017

…..Valdés and Rubalcaba, both Afro-Cuban piano virtuosos of different generations, started out low key and lyrical before the conversations, with a subtle sense of humor, began and carried the 88 keys into a grand display of mastery. They looked across at each other with big smiles, played tricks on each other and complemented each other as they traded lines and harmonized. They spurred each other on. Disappointedly, they left the duo setting and settled for solo territory. Valdés began with his magical take on “Waltz for Debby” and a lyrical swing through “Irresistibly You” before giving way to Rubalcaba who launched into unpredictable chordal splashes then settled into a heartfelt homage to his friend and collaborator the late bassist Charlie Haden by playing “My Love and I” (introduced as “Mi Amor y Yo”), a Johnny Mercer tune that Haden played with his Quartet West group. Valdés returned and the pair played their finest in an extended version of “Caravan,” whimsically playing off each other with shape-shifting tempos and rhythms. Fresh and crisp, the duo dreamed up surprise after surprise, turning the stage into a jazz playground…..

Jazz Times 

7/26/17

By Thomas Conrad

…. the pairing of Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba worked beautifully. They overcame the limitations of the piano duo by an obvious means: They are both world-class solo pianists and they mostly played separately, only coming together for occasional interludes. Rubalcaba is versatile. The last time he played Umbria, in 2014, he appeared with drummers Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and Giovanni Hidalgo in a sustained explosion of rhythmic virtuosity. In 2017 he played an achingly poignant version of Johnny Mercer’s “My Love and I” (“Mi Amor y Yo,” in Rubalcaba’s introduction). It was so soft he barely touched the keys, but it was no problem in the Arena, because 2,000 people sat absolutely rapt and silent. It was like an unfolding of the heart, closely held, from emotion, and gradually released and shared, from emotion. Valdés is one of the living masters of a genre he helped create, Afro-Cuban jazz. When he applied his rhythmic passion to a piece like Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debby,” it was a new revelation of universal meaning in a famous song….

Exclusive Video…

Umbria Jazz: si vola ai Caraibi! Il duo di star cubane incanta l’Arena
„E’ una danza a quattro mani quella che dà vita alla sesta serata degli appuntamenti all’Arena Santa Giuliana. Ecco i virtuosi del pianoforte Chucho Valdes e Gonzalo Rubalcaba“

Due pianoforti. Che vibrano, si rincorrono. Si annodano per poi sciogliersi e infine, si riprendono. E’ una danza a quattro mani quella che dà vita alla sesta serata degli appuntamenti all’Arena Santa Giuliana, il “tempio” estivo della grande rassegna jazz che anche quest’anno non manca di ospitare le stelle della musica.Potrebbe interessarti:

Spazio ancora ad un altro eccezionale duo:  Chucho Valdes e Gonzalo Rubalcaba, considerati dalla critica musicale due autentici virtuosi del pianoforte. L’uno di fronte all’altro, seduti davanti a due gran coda, danno vita a un jazz condito da rimandi latini che non tardano a coinvolgere la platea.

Basta sentire l’applauso sincero di un pubblico appassionato che conosce l’arte di queste virtuose star cubane. Basti pensare, ancora, che Valdes nella sua carriera, ha già conquistato cinque Grammy e tre Latin Grammy. Ma non è solo il plauso di tali, ambiti riconoscimenti, a rendere speciale la sua musica. Profonda e calda come l’Havana, intrisa di contraddizioni e melanconia, ecco innalzarsi al cielo una lenta e appassionata dedica alla sua terra, all’alma latina, ai Caraibi.

Dall’afro jazz alle tradizioni popolari; dal piano escono mille suoni del mondo, raccontanti secondo il suo stile unico. E’stato lui, celebre fondatore degli Irakere, a ridare forma ai tratti identitari della musica latina. Ma sul palco, insieme a lui, c’è Gonzalo Rubalcaba, nato nell’Avana post-rivoluzione e intriso di folklore caraibico e jazz americano, ma dal solido studio classico. Insieme, quasi fossero una sola anima, incantano il pubblico dell’Arena. E se pensavate che l’Avana fosse così lontana, stasera questi due virtuosi ce l’hanno portata a Perugia.

http://www.perugiatoday.it/eventi/umbria-jazz-duo-star-cubane-13-luglio-2017.html
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