For Drum Master Ignacio Berroa’s 64th Birthday, Uncut Interviews From 2014 and 2008

To mark the 64th birthday of the great Havana-born drummer Ignacio Berroa, I’m posting interviews that I conducted with him in 2014 and in 2008. The latter interview was conducted over a leisurely breakfast one morning during the Dominican Republic Jazz Festival, where Berroa was performing with a group that included the great conguero Giovanni Hidalgo, who contributed to the conversation. The earlier interview was conducted in May 2008 live on WKCR, to publicize a gig at the Jazz Standard.

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Ignacio Berroa (Dominican Republic, Cabarete, Nov. 7, 2014):

TP:   Since you have a new recording and you’re performing your repertoire tonight, I’d like to know something about what you’re going for as a bandleader and composer in presenting it.

IB:   What I try to convey as a bandleader and as a composer… I am not a great composer actually. I composed one tune on my previous album, Codes, “Joao Su Merced,” and on this one I composed one called “Laura’s Waltz,” which I dedicated to my granddaughter. It’s a 3/4; a waltz.

But the message that I tried to convey in both my albums, and in the next album that I will do, is always to mix the music from my heritage with the music of my passion. That’s why the name of this album. Since I was a kid, as you can see in the liner notes, I fall in love with jazz, and I always want to be a jazz player. But coming to the United States, I figured that I have to do something that will be interesting. First of all, I didn’t want to be a Latin drummer, because not too many people to compete. The main reason why I left Cuba was because I always wanted to be a jazz drummer. But in order for me to be different from the others, what I figured was to mix my rhythms, the rhythms of my country with the straight-ahead of jazz, which, in my opinion, and as we know if you check history, have a lot of in common—because everything came from Africa. So rhythmically speaking, we’ve got a lot of things in common. The only thing is that in jazz they swing the notes, BING, BINK-A-DING, BINK-A-DING, and we might do BING-BING-PA-BING, BING-PA…— This is a triple feel from the Africans. [SINGS IT] On top of that… You can superimpose. [DEMONSTRATES ON TABLE] That’s it.

So for me, rhythmically speaking, it is easy to understand where we’re coming from. So mixing both cultures is what has made my drumming interesting. That’s the main reason why I became Dizzy Gillespie’s drummer for ten years. I always tell people… I don’t like to talk about myself because it seems like I’m bragging. The way I see it, and the way it is, in the history of American music I am the only drummer from another country (you can correct me if I’m wrong) that played with the master and the creator of bebop for ten years. Sometimes, when people try to pigeonhole me into that “Latin drummer,” I always tell them, “Well, but Dizzy Gillespie didn’t play salsa.” So I was with Dizzy Gillespie playing world music, if we want to call it that way, but I had to play a lot of straight-ahead. And if my ass was sitting in that chair for ten years, it means that… Dizzy was dizzy but not stupid. So he knew what he had in that chair. That’s what I always try to combine. That’s what differentiates me from other drummers.

TP:   Was that concept in place when you got here?

IB:   That was something that developed. When I arrived to New York, I didn’t know the meaning of “yes.” I had a great mentor. Mario Bauzá was my mentor. Mario Bauzá was the first one who told me, “Ignacio, in this country, what they pay is for originality. If you become another one, you are another one; if you become a clone of Art Blakey, you are Art Blakey’s clone. Or you are Philly Joe Jones’ clone.”

So I found my way to incorporate… As a matter of fact, I remember very clearly when I started playing with that… Dizzy used to play a tune called “School Days” which was a shuffle that he used to sing, and one day while we were playing “School Days,” I was playing the shuffle, and then suddenly, at some point, I started playing the Afro-Cuban clave. While keeping the shuffle, I put the clave. He turned around and he looked at me like I was crazy. But he kept singing because the beat was going on. He loved it. The only thing I did afterwards was changing that pattern from the cowbell to the cymbal. That was the beginning for me, when I said, “Wait a minute; I am going to start going for this.”

TP:   Dizzy must have been very supportive of all that. He must have loved that.

IB:   Dizzy was in love with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Very simple. It was Mario Bauzá who turned him on to that. It was Mario Bauzá who encouraged Dizzy Gillespie to move to New York, because Mario Bauzá met Dizzy in Philadelphia while Mario was playing with Cab Calloway. He met Dizzy at a jam session. Back then, musicians used to stay in Philadelphia to hone their skills before moving to New York. Mario met Dizzy at a jam session, and it was Mario who told Dizzy, “You are ready; go to New York; and when you go to New York, you call me.” It was Mario who put Dizzy Gillespie to Cab Calloway’s big band, because Mario was about to go do the band with his brother-in-law Machito. It was Mario who told Cab Calloway, “this is the guy that I met here,” and that was the famous phrase… Cab Calloway didn’t like Dizzy. Cab Calloway used to say that Dizzy played Chinese music. But Mario kept pushing, and when Dizzy proved that he was able to play the first trumpet book, Mario left and Dizzy stayed with Cab, but they became friends. It was Mario who put in Dizzy’s mind all the Afro-Cuban thing, and then it was Mario who told Dizzy in 1943 or 1944 [1946], when Dizzy said he wanted to do something new, Mario was the one who told him, “Why don’t you hire this conga player who just came from Cuba?”—that name was Chano Pozo.

TP:   Did Dizzy work with you on swing rhythms, or did you have it together?

IB:   No. I had it together, but then I learned about the language. Dizzy taught me… I learned a great deal with Dizzy about the language. The same way that I am never going to be able to speak English without this horrible accent, Dizzy told me about the language—about articulation, about phrasing. When he was doing a phrase, where to hit the bass drum. He said to me, “I’m playing a phrase, A-BEAT, BEAT, BEE-DO-BE-DU, BE-DA-BA-DOO-BI-DI, BEE-BAHP-BE-O—OH-OH. He said, “When I stop there to breathe, that’s where, in this language…”

Of course, another thing that I did and I am going to do until the day that I die, I continue listening to the masters. So I learn every day. Every day that’s something that I am going to do as long as my mind continues working.

TP:   Who are the American masters that you listen to? Who are the Cuban masters that you listen to?

IB:   Cuban masters? Anybody. From Los Muñequitos de Matanzas… I got that background because my father was a musician (violin). He’s still alive, but he’s 85 years old. He retired. But I grew up in a house where I used to listen to Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Abelardo Barroso, La Sublime(?—10:17), (?) Gonzalez, Jose Fajardo… All those Cuban bands, that was in my house, and that was on the street. On my way from my house to the school, somebody would be playing in a jukebox in the court of my house Muñequitos. So that was in the air. My mom was crazy. In the house, the radio was always on. But dad was a musician. My grandfather was a musician.

TP:   So your path was not unlike Gonzalo Rubalcaba or Paquito D’Rivera, whose fathers were musicians.

IB:   More than that. Gonzalo’s father and my father… You want to know something very curious? You’re going to have to pay me for this. [LAUGHS] The first job that my father had as a professional, in a charanga band in Cuba, the pianist was Gonzalo’s dad. You know what? This is something that if you go to Cuba or if you want to go to Miami… From that era, there are just two guys alive. Gonzalo’s dad and my father. When those two guys die, there’s going to be nobody to ask about that era. Because those guys are the only ones alive—Gonzalo’s dad and my dad.

TP:   Who are the American drummers you listened to?

IB:   My first idol was Max Roach. My notebooks in Cuba, they used to say… I wrote in all my notebooks, “Max Roach, Max Roach, Max Roach.” He was my idol. That was the first bebop album I was exposed to, was the Max Roach band with Clifford Brown and Harold Land. So I listened to Max Roach while I was in Cuba. But don’t forget, I grew up in an environment that Cuba and the United States have no relations, Americans were our enemies, playing jazz was promoting the music of the enemy, and there were no more record stores. The second album that I had was Miles Davis, Four and More. So from Max Roach, I jumped to Tony Williams without listening to Jimmy Cobb, Philly Joe Jones, Blakey… It was Max Roach, Tony Williams, then later I was able to listen to Relaxin’ by Miles Davis, and then I was able to listen to Philly Joe Jones. It was like that.

But then, after I arrived in the United States in 1980, I had the opportunity to check out everybody. Then I said, “Now I’m going to do my homework the way it’s supposed to be.” Then I discovered Baby Dodds, Chick Webb, Papa Jo Jones. I did my whole homework. Also drummers that unfortunately were not very famous. One of the drummers who inspires me the most is a guy who used to play with Dexter Gordon, Eddie Gladden. He was one of the most inspiring drummers for me. I loved Jack DeJohnette. I love every drummer. If I have to pick one, my idol—Roy Haynes. He is my idol. When I grow up, I want to be like Roy.

TP:    On both records, you use a very expansive sound palette—electronic wind instruments, synthesizers.

IB:   Yes. It’s just that I want to do something different. It is a matter of taste. Some people are curious, and some people criticize that. I have learned in my 61 years that you cannot please everybody. We are in 2014, and it is an era where we have been using synthesizers for a long time. I remember being in Cuba when we were able to hear My Spanish Heart, and on all those Chick Corea albums he was using a lot of synthesizer. So I wanted for this album to have that sound, to have the EWI or the Yamaha MIDI control. So that’s going to be… To me, it gives a fresh sound, a different sound, but with the Afro-Cuban flavor behind. That’s what I want to get on this album… You miss the electric guitar. I don’t want to do another album that sounds… With all due respect to those purists, those people who think that mainstream jazz has to sound always like this, and Latin Jazz has to sound always like this. But I’m looking for something else. From my point of view as a drummer, what has to be happening is while you’re playing behind that. That’s what has to be happening. The way Miles Davis used to say, “When I put a band together, the first guy I look for is the drummer.” If the drummer is happening, the band is happening. So my conception is, I can have 5-6 guys for three organs, five guitars, two bassoons, three oboes, but I’m playing with Giovanni and we have that motor running, that’s the main thing.

TP:   Giovanni made a comment when you went off to get the record that he was waiting to get some drums, and that, as a conga player, he sees the drums as kind of his…did you say piano or orchestra?

GIOVANNI HIDALGO:   I was saying that I like to play drums, too. For me, the drumset is the piano of the percussion, and the conga player ….(?—18:26)…. That’s it. It’s exquisite like a great perfume, the drumset. That’s vast. You have to divide yourself not in four. In five. Because you’re playing four different things plus what you have in your mind—that’s five things in one.

TP:   How often are you able to perform live with this band?

IB:   Now that I have a new album out, I hope I do more. Unfortunately, I don’t work as much as I think I should be working. One of the things, in my opinion, in the 34 years that I have been in the United States, we drummers have always been seen as second-class citizens. We cannot be bandleaders. It has always been like that. I’ll give you a good example of the way people overlook drummers. When you hear people talking about the bebop era, everybody mentions Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk. You almost never hear somebody mentioning Kenny Clarke. Why? Because we drummers are the guys who are sitting behind there to make everybody look good, and we drummers don’t have the capacity of being bandleaders. I hope some day that will change, because that’s not right. If you check history, the drummers that were able to make a career with the bands: Blakey with the Jazz Messengers, because he brought to those bands Lee Morgan, Freddie, Wayne, all the great musicians that we know. Elvin Jones, a little bit, with his Jazz Machine.

TP:   Tony Williams.

IB:   Tony for a while. But the only drummer that you might think of who was able to keep a band running for a long period of time was Blakey with the Jazz Messengers. It is hard for drummers. So nowadays, people, promoters at festivals…people who are in charge of festivals, they would rather hire a quartet by an upcoming piano player than the Giovanni Hidalgo Quartet. They see Giovanni as not what they call the “front line.” But nobody thinks how that front line will sound with a good drummer or a good conga player behind. So we have also the right to be a bandleader. This is my second album. The way life is, some people are going to like it, other people are not going to like it. But I see a lot of things out there in the festivals that are not as good as Giovanni’s band or my band or Dave Weckl’s band. It is always they think, “You are a drummer,” and when you are a drummer… Actually, I remember when I recorded that album for Blue Note, thanks to Bruce Lundvall. A lot of people in the company didn’t want to sign me, because from their point of view… And I agree. I’m not holding this against them, because in the end, this is a business. They told Bruce Lundvall, “Drummers don’t sell.” Thank God, Bruce Lundvall thought that the music on Codes was worth it for them to make an album. And do you know what? Codes sold very well—for jazz.

But it is a mental thing. Bill Stewart? He has to be sideman. But now, if Bill Stewart wants to go out with his band? No. I would like to work more. I don’t know if I am going to convince promoters, because that’s out of my hands. I don’t know if booking agents might want to sign me. When I released Codes, it was nominated for a Grammy. It was an album with Blue Note Records. I had my story behind playing with Dizzy, with Chick, with everybody. I called every booking agent in the United States, every reputable booking agent. Nobody took me. I don’t think Jeff Tain Watts works a lot with his band. We’re drummers and that’s the way they are seen. They are drummers.

I hope for the future generations, even after I die, that this conception will change. Because when you go to see the Roy Haynes Quartet, man, that’s a hell of a band. I think that what we have to change is the conception that because we are drummers, we cannot be bandleaders. That’s wrong.

TP:   Stepping away from the injustice of it or the need to do it…

IB:   I like that word, “injustice.”

TP:   Whatever the word… Do you do a lot of clinician work?

IB:   Yes, and I would love to do more. Because students need to know about their history. It is very important to know about the history. People need to know where the rhythms came from, our heritage. They need to know that the slaves were brought from Africa, that the slaves were not just brought to New Orleans but to the Caribbean and Brazil and to Peru, and that’s why all the connections exist, rhythmically speaking. People need to know. Even Cuban guys. Last night at the restaurant, my bass player, Armando Gola, who is a young guy, he doesn’t know about the history of Cuban music. He didn’t know where the danzon came from. He didn’t know where the cha-cha-cha came from. He didn’t know where the son came from, which is the foundation of the music that we have for years been calling salsa.

Another thing that I want to teach people is the conception of Latin Jazz. Because when you talk about “Latin,” you’re talking about a huge continent called Latin America that begins in Mexico and ends in Tiera Del Fuego, down there in Argentina. But when you hear Latin Jazz… I tell people, “Do you know that each of those countries has their own rhythms, their own identity?” Do you know that Mexico has a national rhythm? Do you know that Peru has a national rhythm? Do you know that Colombia has a national rhythm? Chile. Brazil, of course, is the only one that everybody knows. But each country has their own rhythm. Puerto Rico has its own rhythms. Haiti has its own rhythms. So I don’t hear many people playing Latin Jazz with any Venezuelan-Peruvian-Mexican influence. Everything is congas, an instrument that was created in the island of Cuba. Those patterns came from there. And the timbales…

So why Latin Jazz? Very simple. Because in the ’40s, when everybody started playing at the Palladium, when Tito Rodriguez, Machito, Tito Puente, the Latinos who used to go to dance at the Palladium were just two groups—Puerto Ricans and Cubans. So the Americans used to say, “Let’s go to the Palladium to check the Latinos.” That’s how the name Latin Jazz came…

TP:   I guess Cuba had the big entertainment infrastructure, which helped develop the music as well.

IB:   From my perspective, it’s very simple. The geographical location of Cuba is what gave Cuba the advantage of having more rhythms. Why? Because it was the biggest island. It was the island that needed more slaves. And the Spaniards brought slaves from different groups. So the Arara, the Abakua, the Congo, these different cultures were forced to live together. Everybody had their rhythm. People that didn’t like each other, and they were forced to live together. So that atrocity led to the rhythmic richness that we have today. Puerto Rico was a smaller island. Puerto Rico was the last island in the Caribbean that got into the slave trade. When Puerto Rico got into the slave trade, it was the tail end. So Cuba, because it was the biggest island and they needed more labor, they brought more people. So in other words, in my opinion, the island got lucky.

Second thing. Their position geographically. When someone was coming from Europe to perform in Venezuela, to perform in Argentina, to perform in Peru, Cuba was at most a stop. They had to stop in Cuba to refuel, to get food. So Enrico Caruso was coming to perform in Argentina. Caruso would stop in Havana, and he would perform in Havana, because he had three days to stop in Havana. That gave Cuba the advantage over the other islands as far as musical development. Because it was the biggest island. They needed more of the slaves for the sugar, for everything they were doing in Cuba.

TP:   Also, a lot of the American jazz musicians came there in the ’40s and ’50s, after World War 2.

IB:   I’m talking from the origins. Then, Cuba is 90 miles away from the United States, so a lot of Americans going to Cuba. So definitely, the geographical position of the island is a key role on the development of the music in Cuba. We got lucky, because if the island of Cuba had been off the coast of Argentina, that would have been our ass!

TP:   So playing with Dizzy didn’t just teach you swing rhythms, but also to bring in all the national rhythms of Latin America. I’m assuming you had to play those specific rhythms in the United Nations Orchestra.

IB:   This is another thing that I want to clarify. A lot of people relate me with Dizzy to the United Nations Orchestra. I started playing with Dizzy Gillespie in 1981.

TP:   I understand that. I’m only following up on your point about every country having its own rhythm…

IB:   Yes, and in the United Nations Orchestra, what Dizzy wanted to do was to bring together that that’s what we need to do.

TP:   I guess my point was to ask if that influenced you as well. He schooled you on American swing, and I wondered if he influenced you in that regard.

IB:   No, I think I already was into that. I think that my encounter with Dizzy was meant to be. We were supposed to run into each other, and exchange ideas, and the United Nations Orchestra was something that was supposed to happen, and luckily, it happened, because he gathered the greatest musicians from the different countries. He had Giovanni, he got Airto, he got Danilo Perez, he got me, he got Arturo Sandoval, he got Paquito, Moody, Slide Hampton. That’s also what I’m trying to do nowadays. I’m trying to mix the music and play also with other musicians, with American musicians, and see what happens. Because when you play just with a musician that knows your music, that’s very easy. That’s what I tell people. Some people don’t like that I came to the United States, and that I play straight-ahead and that I want to play straight-ahead. Oh man, you should play Cuban music. No. Why? I wanted to compete. There is nobody… How many people am I going to compete with here in the United States? The late Steve Berrios. Who else? I arrived in New York in 1980, and I’m going to compete with Steve Berrios? So I came all the way from Cuba to compete with one guy? It makes no sense. I want to compete in the good sense of the word. Compete. Learn. I want to compete with my heroes. I want to see what they have done. That was the challenge.

TP:   It’s like, in writing, Joseph Conrad or Nabokov, who were born and raised in another culture, and wrote great novels in English.

IB:   Yes. But if you come from a country…

GIOVANNI:   What he’s saying is the truth. Because the first one to come to New York and Puerto Rico to bring another area of the songo was Ignacio Berroa. In 1980, and from that year until the end, that was because of him. That was another approach, another vision to the drummers. You never saw that before. We are in 2014, and he’s still right here.

TP:   The only drummer I can think of… What Willie Bobo did on Inventions and Dimensions was pretty remarkable, I think.

GIOVANNI:   Bobo was William Correa, a Puerto Rican guy, but he was with the Cubans… Amazing. When Tito Puente, him, Patato, they did the Puente Percussion… Boom. It was an explosion. I am telling you, to be brief, still, when you put all of those recordings… Ignacio came…

TP:   I think Art Blakey’s drum records in the ’50s raised consciousness.

GIOVANNI:   Blakey was ahead, because he was using… Remember this album with Kenny Dorham, Afrodisia? It was Patato on congas. This album from Max Roach, Supercussion—that was Patato on congas.

TP:   Blakey would have three percussionists, 2-3 trap drummers—he did a few of those for Blue Note.

GIOVANNI:   Amazing. He did one with Charlie Persip, Blakey, and Papa Jo Jones. But ….(?—37:09)….. all that time over here, and he is one of our mentors, and one of our examples forever, how to play the drums approaching with the Latin, with the Jazz, with the Afro. The rudiments for that… I’m telling you, always what he said before, Cuba, Puerto Rico… It’s amazing. He’s amazing. Even for me. I’m still learning. Like, I’ve been playing since I was 3 years old, but I’m still learning, and it’s never-ending. In the world of drums, which is the leader of percussion, with sticks and with the hands, that’s another beautiful thing… Like I said, deep. Very vast, and so…how you call that… Hovering or…the flowing…

TP:   Flowing.

GIOVANNI:   Flowing. You know what I mean? Now much better, because now… I’m going to agree with what Ignacio said, because it’s the truth. We’re in 2014, and I believe… As far as I am concerned, many of those young drummers are good ones, but I believe they are missing something. Like I do always, Ignacio and myself, we don’t forget the pioneers.

IB:   The tradition.

GIOVANNI:    The tradition. We don’t forget the analog. Ok? The digital era is so good, but if you forget the analog, if you forget the pioneers, forget about it. Stay at home and forget about it.

IB:   So we were talking about going to universities, and I was saying that. Universities meaning… That’s an interesting conversation that we were having yesterday. For example, universities… We all know that we are facing economically difficult times, but for example, certain universities, in the same way that you go to any major university in any place in the world, and the Classics department has 96% money, and the 4% goes to the jazz department, even though in the jazz department… It is rare to see a jazz department bringing a drummer for a residency, for a master class, because universities are more concerned about bringing this guy who is going to teach the students about harmony, the voicings, this-and-that… But you have to put your things in rhythm. So what I mean is that there should be a balance, and heads of jazz departments in different universities, have to be aware, “Ok, this is the budget that I have; I am going to bring this guy, this guy, but I am also going to bring Ignacio, Lewis Nash…” Because those guys have something to say that is going to benefit all the students. When I go to universities, the most important thing I request is that everybody attends my clinic. I tell the guy, “I want every jazz musician in my clinic.” Because I am going to tell them about the history. I am going to tell these guys who write music, the arrangers, when you’re going to arrange a piece of music, you have to know about the clave, you have to know… Based on the style of music you’re going to write, you need to know about the articulation, how you’re going to phrase, how you’re going to do… [SINGS THEME OF “EVIDENCE.”] If you’re going to play that as Latin rhythm, before you sit down and open Finale or whatever on the computer, you need to know about that.

TP:   Last year I did a piece for Jazz Times where I talked to 10 musicians from Cuba about their formative years. Almost all of them told me that in the conservatory, in ENA and the regional schools, Cuban folkloric music was treated the same way as jazz—both were out of the curriculum.

IB:   All those guys are younger than me, except for Paquito.

TP:   I wanted to ask you about your musical relationship with Gonzalo. You played with him…

IB:   Ten years.

TP:   Haven’t you played during the last decade?

IB:   Actually, no, I didn’t. I played with Gonzalo until we recorded the album Paseo. Paseo was the last album that I recorded with him, and then we toured that album, and then after that… I think I stopped playing with Gonzalo in 2006-2007, when I recorded my album, Codes, and then I went on my own. I think that in 2008 we did a short tour in Europe as a trio.

TP:   But I wanted to ask you about that partnership. It seems to have taken music forward.

IB:   Things happen for a reason. Gonzalo is ten years younger than me. I was a very good friend of Gonzalo’s brother, Jesus Rubalcaba, who passed away. We went to the same school together, and when I left Cuba, Gonzalo was in his teens. We played for the first time in 1996 in Puerto Rico, at the Heineken Jazz Festival, by accident. I was playing at the festival with Tito Puente’s Latin Jazz All-Stars, and I was also playing with Danilo Perez Quartet. Gonzalo was performing there, but the United States denied a visa to his drummer at that time. I was living in Miami, and the guy from the festival called me and said, “Ignacio, do you have any problem playing with Gonzalo Rubalcaba?”—because of the political situation. I said, “Ask him if he has any problem playing with me. I have no problem playing with Gonzalo. I live in Miami, but I don’t care. Music is music.” In fact, in 1995, I did an instructional video, and I invited Changuito to the video.

Anyway, we played as a trio, Gonzalo, Eddie Gomez and myself. Then I think the following year Gonzalo moved to Miami, and he called me, and that was the beginning of our ten years collaboration. It was something I’ve always called “love at first sight.” We started playing and we clicked. We’re coming from the same background. Even though I was ten years older than him, he brought me to his level, the way he sees music. That was a challenge for me, because when I recorded those albums with Gonzalo, I was already an old guy. It’s like when Roy Haynes recorded “Question and Answer” with Pat Metheny. So it was something very special, and I think that something beautiful came out of that. Paseo is an album that everywhere I go, when I teach at universities, everybody comes to speak to me about Paseo or Supernova. All the kids remember those albums. So it was a very special collaboration, and I hope that some day people may want to see that again. But aside from that, Gonzalo is one of my best friends.

TP:   And he is the producer of your record.

IB:   He is one of my best friends. I am very happy. I think it was something that was meant to happen, the same way that I think my encounter with Dizzy Gillespie was meant to happen. In my mind, there is no doubt that there is something external that has to do hold the things together. Ok, you’re going to meet this guy, you’re going to meet this guy, and you’re going to go… The same way that Parker and Dizzy met. I don’t want to compare us to Dizzy and Parker, but you know what I mean?

TP:   People cross paths.

IB:   Crossed paths. Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to say.

I was saying at the beginning that the people in the industry, booking agents, promoters, I think they should be more open-minded and realize that I’m a drummer, but that doesn’t mean that I just have to be a sideman. People also have to be open, like… I’m Cuban. I think that’s not an issue now, but it was an issue for years. I’m Cuban, but my taste playing straight-ahead has been proven. Some people still always try to box me or pigeonhole me. “Oh, Ignacio. Latin. He’s the king of Latin.” It’s hard for them to accept, “Man, Ignacio came here and he became a great straight-ahead… Ignacio came here and absorbed our language. Ignacio did his homework.” In the same way that I would be proud if Blakey would have gone to Cuba, and end up playing in Cuban bands. I’d be happy. Because someone, a foreigner, came to our country and absorbed our music, and became so good that he’s playing with all the Cuban bands.
[END OF CONVERSATION]

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Ignacio Berroa (May 22, 2008) – (WKCR):

[From Codes, “Matrix”]
TP:   Ignacio Berroa is performing Friday and Saturday at the Jazz Standard with a quartet, featuring pianist Robert Rodriguez, bassist Ricky Rodriguez, and saxophonist Ben Wendel.
Over these performances, will you be performing primarily music from this record?

IB:   Pretty much, and also some new music that we have been playing, planning to do the second album, but I don’t know yet when I’m going to do it, or which company I’m going to do it with. We’re going to be playing mostly the music from Codes and some new material.

TP:   Is this your first album as a leader?

IB:   My first one. I haven’t done any.

TP:   A long time in the making. You’ve been a professional musician in the U.S., and before that in Cuba, for what, 40 years probably.

IB:   Oh, man, for a long time. I started my professional career in 1970. I left Cuba in 1980, with the Mariel boat lift. In fact, this coming Monday is going to be my 28th year since I arrived in the United States.

TP:   Congratulations.

IB:   Thank you. I feel very happy about it. It took me a while to do an album, even though a lot of people always were encouraging me about doing my own project. My friend Dizzy Gillespie was always asking me about, “When are you going to do your album?” But I didn’t feel I was ready to do what I really wanted to project in an album. I always tell people who ask me, “It would have been very easy for me to do another Latin Jazz album in the early ’80s, and have Dizzy Gillespie as my guest artist.” It would not have cost me a penny; I mean, it would have been a success.

TP:   Why didn’t you do it?

IB:   Because musically speaking, I was not ready. I was not ready to do… I’m the type of person that, you know, I don’t like to do something that I’m not going to feel proud later on. So musically speaking, I think I was… Maybe it is in my mind, but in my opinion, I was not ready, because I didn’t want to do another Latin album. Unfortunately, a lot of people have the vision that when you are from Cuba, from Puerto Rico, what you have to play is just son montuno, cha-cha-cha, because you are a Latino. My passion since I was a kid was jazz. I always wanted to be a jazz drummer, and my mission is to mix Afro-Cuban rhythms with the jazz language. Believe me, Ted, back in the early ’80s… And I was struggling with a lot of things. I left Cuba in 1980. My wife at the time and my kid stayed behind. The Cuban government kept them for many years. I was in a new country where I didn’t speak the language. So I had to support my family in Cuba, deal with all the new situation—it was very hard. So my mind was not in the right frame in order to say, “Ok, I am going to do an album that I will be proud of.”

TP:   You were trying to survive.

IB:   I was trying to survive, and I was trying to keep my family in Cuba, dealing with the Cuban government, trying to allow my family to leave the island—which they didn’t for four years. So it was rough.

TP:   With this recording, you’ve assembled some of the finest musicians in the world, American, Puerto Rican and Cuban, to perform with. Gonzalo Rubalcaba, whose group you’ve been part of for many years…

IB:   We’ve played together for ten years.

TP:   Edward Simon as well. David Sanchez and Giovanni Hidalgo. A slew of high-level Cuban musicians like Armando Gola and Felipe Lamoglia, who you played with in Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s quartet. But you assembled them differently within the framework of your compositions, and each tune has its own identity, so it’s evident that you put a lot of care into making this, and into the sounds you put forth.

IB:   Sure. It wouldn’t be possible without the help of all the great musicians who participated in the album. But yes, it took me a while. I really thought about it. It was a long process about realizing what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do the tunes, to make the arrangements, which were made by Felipe Lamoglia. It took a lot of time, Felipe and I getting together, and me explaining to Felipe what I wanted, the way I want to phrase the melodies—like what I did with “Matrix.”

TP:   So you conceptualized it and he executed it.

IB:   Exactly. Most of the arrangements were done by Felipe Lamoglia. The only thing that I did was tell him, “I want to play ‘Matrix’ this way; the melody has to go like this; we’re going to do it this way.” The same with “Pinocchio.” Things like that.

TP:   Listeners may be curious about aspects of your formative years. You said you became a professional musician at 17, 1970, in Cuba, and you always wanted to be a jazz drummer.

IB:   Mmm-hmm.

TP:   During the years when you would have wanted to be a jazz drummer, there was sort of an official proscription from the Cuban Government, I think…

IB:   You said “sort of”? You weren’t there! [LAUGHS]

TP:   I wasn’t there. Being tactful doesn’t work sometimes. First of all, how did the interest gestate? Are you from a musical family?

IB:   Yes. My father used to play the violin. My father also is a jazz lover. So I was lucky that one day my father came to my house with two albums, one by Nat King Cole and the other one by Glenn Miller. I was 10 years old, and when I heard the music, I fell in love with that music. It was like love at first sight. Glenn Miller, “Moonlight Serenade,” Nat King Cole singing “When I Fall In Love.” When I heard that music, something got me. I said, “that’s what I want to do.”

The rest was very hard. There is something that I always like to talk… Some people have been asking me about writing a book, and it is about my generation from the ’70s, the musician generation… For us, it was very hard. These days a lot of people see that in Cuba they have a jazz festival, and there has been a kind of openness now for the music. I should say, in my opinion, that happened after 1980. But in the ’70s it was very, very hard. It was prohibited to play jazz. I remember, for example…just to give you one example…playing at the Radio and TV orchestra, and the conductor… We’d be playing an arrangement that had 16 bars of swing, and I remember seeing the conductor from the podium saying, “Ok, guys, those 16 bars, we’re going to play cha-cha-cha.” Because it was playing jazz; it was playing the music of the enemy. The way my generation was raised in Cuba was that Americans were our enemies, and playing their was music was trying…they were trying to penetrate our ideology…their ideology through music. So that’s hard it was for my generation. We had it very hard in the ’70s. That’s something that a lot of people don’t know.

TP:   You’re 5 years younger than Paquito D’Rivera, who’s written about this in his autobiography. Are you from Havana or somewhere else?

IB:   I’m from Havana, too.

TP:   What were your steps in learning the drums? And I’d also like to ask if folkloric music was part of your upbringing…

IB:   That was also prohibited in the ’70s, because it had to do with the Yoruba religion, and anything against the Communist ideology was prohibited.

So I am a self-taught drummer. In Cuba, in my days, everything was a classical training formation. I went to the National School of the Arts, where I studied percussion. I had a great teacher who studied here in New York in the ’40s with Henry Adler. But you’ve got to take this into consideration. There were no drums. Playing popular music was prohibited. Any kind of popular music. Jazz was the music of the enemy. Playing bata drums and Yoruba things was something that was not within the Revolution ideology, so it was also prohibited. The religion was prohibited—kind of. People would…

TP:   People went underground with it.

IB:   Underground. Very underground. If you want to do something in Cuba… People who practiced the religion openly were like in ostracism. You were not able to go to the university. You were not able to travel. You were nobody. I really admire those brave people who really practiced the Yoruba religion very openly in the late ’60s and the ’70s.

TP:   As far as your identity as a trapset drummer, were you listening to people for models? Were there people in Cuba…

IB:   No. I was lucky. Don’t forget, before Castro took power, Cuba was a very prominent country, very close to the United States, and a lot of people who were jazz fans had albums… Like I said to you, my dad came to my house with a Nat King Cole and a Glenn Miller album.

TP:   So you had albums to listen to, and models.

IB:   The young musicians, we had to go to the old musicians’ houses and listen to the albums, so we had some information. But also, the most important thing is…what I always say is this is what saved our life…was the proximity of Cuba to the United States. Just 90 miles from Cuba to Key West, so when the weather was good we were able to listen to the radio station coming from Key West, and some people also were able to see some TV shows. So that’s what kept us informed of what was going on.

I never had any drums lesson. I’m a self-taught drummer. The only people I was able to listen to was on albums… To give you an example, my first exposure to modern jazz was Max Roach with Clifford Brown. So Max was my first influence. Then I was able to listen to an Art Blakey album. From there, the jump went to Miles Davis, Four and More—Tony Williams.

TP:   Well, you did pretty good.

IB:   [LAUGHS] Yeah! I was listening to those albums every day, and play the drums by myself, and also I had no drumset—there were no drums in Cuba. So it was very tough.

TP:   As a young guy were you seeing relationships between what those drummers were doing… Max Roach was influenced to a certain degree by Haitian drums and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Africa had been to Africa. Did you discern correspondence in the patterns…

IB:   Yes, I knew that since I was there, and I knew that American musicians like Dizzy Gillespie were very much into Afro-Cuban music. So yes, I was able to hear it immediately.

TP:   Were you in contact with any of the Cuban musicians and a little older who became the first wave of post-Castro jazz musicians that Americans knew about, such as Chucho Valdes, or Emiliano Salvador (who they didn’t know so much about), or Paquito…

IB:   Oh, yeah. We used to play… Sometimes we used to do jam sessions, on-the-ground jam sessions. I remember in 1977-78, there was a club in Havana called the Rio Club. It used to be called the Johnny’s Dreams. We were allowed to play jazz just Mondays. So I was in contact with those musicians, and also with Emiliano Salvador. We played together in the same band from 1975 to 1979—for four years.

TP:   What was he like? Americans don’t know so much about him.

IB:   Emiliano Salvador, in my opinion, was a great piano player. He was my favorite piano player. Chucho is a great piano player. For my taste, Emiliano was my guy—let’s put it that way.

TP:   What was the difference for you?

IB:   The difference for me at that time is that Emiliano sounded more like McCoy and Chick Corea. He sounded more to me like a New Yorker. Back in the days, I remember it was Emiliano who introduced me to my favorite drummer, Roy Haynes. It was Emiliano in 1975 who told me, “Ignacio, check this guy out.” I don’t know how he got the recording. Probably through the guitar player, Paolo Menendez, who was American, and he was able to come over here, to this country, while living in Cuba, and he used to bring some records. Emiliano told me one day, “Ignacio, check this guy out.” So Emiliano was to me, and for a lot of people in Cuba back in the days…he was the guy. We always have this thing, “who’s the best?” It’s not a matter of who plays more. Who’s the best?

TP:   It’s your taste.

IB:   For my taste, Emiliano Salvador was the guy.

TP:   I know Enrique Pla was the drummer in Irakere. Was that an exciting band for you? It’s very influential on the way Cuban music sounded subsequently.

IB:   Irakere was a great, great band. It was a band composed of the best instrumentalists in Cuba at that time, and it was a big influence. Also, I have to say it was only band. It was the only band that the Cuban government allowed to do that. Also, in my opinion, Irakere was a band that they wanted to play jazz, and they had to put in the percussion in order to cover what they really wanted to do. Because with no percussion, there would have been no Irakere. But those guys back in the day, Paquito and Arturo and Chucho, what they really wanted to play was straight-ahead jazz. That was their passion. That’s what they wanted to play. But Irakere was a very influential band in our life. Like I said, the greatest musicians, the greatest instrumentalists in the ‘70s were in that band. It was also the only band that the Cuban government allowed during that period.

TP:   You just mentioned 1975-1979 playing with Emiliano Salvador, and during those years is when Dizzy Gillespie precipitated the Havana Jazz Festival…

IB:   1977. It was not a jazz festival. What happened was… For some reason, a boat that left New Orleans…

TP:   It was a cruise ship, I think.

IB:   Some musicians were on it… I don’t know how that cruise ship stopped in Havana for two days. How? That’s something that we have to ask the Cuban government and the American government.

TP:   Well, whatever it was, Dizzy Gillespie came in, and I presume you met him around then…

IB:   I didn’t meet… I want to straighten this out. I didn’t meet Dizzy Gillespie that day. I was lucky that I was able to get a ticket to see the concert. It was one concert in 1977. Dizzy Gillespie played. The late Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines also played. I don’t remember who else. I was able to see Dizzy with his quartet—Mickey Roker, Ben Brown on bass, Rodney Jones on guitar. I remember that when I left, when the concert was over, we were standing on the sidewalk and I told my friends, “Well, I can die already; I saw Dizzy Gillespie.” I don’t know how that was arranged.

Then in 1979, it was the big Havana Jam, where Bruce Lundvall, who was the President of Columbia… I also don’t know how that was arranged through the Cuban government. They did those three days, Havana Jam. But the first time we were exposed to Dizzy Gillespie was in 1977, when he did that concert. I was not able to speak to him. I’m still trying to learn how to speak English, so you can imagine that 28 years ago… As I said to you, when I arrived into this country, I was not able to say “yes.” So I met Dizzy Gillespie officially the day that Mario Bauza introduced me to Dizzy Gillespie, here, in New York.

TP:   In 1980, you left Cuba under not-luxurious-conditions to come to the United States…

IB:   For them, back then, I was a traitor. I left Cuba because I always wanted to leave the island. I was always looking for freedom, and I want to play jazz, and I was not allowed to do that in my country. But I also have to add to this that even… I always tell this to people. Even if Cuba had been a free country, I was coming to New York anyway, because the musicians I wanted to play with were here. So I would have come here anyway.

TP:   So you came here through the Mariel boat-lift…

IB:   It was the Mariel boatlift, when 125,000 Cubans left the island. I landed in Key West, and from there I went to a camp, Indian Town Gap, and I spent 36 days there going through the process. By that time, the American government realized that Castro had sent a lot of spies. So after 36 days at the Indian Town Gap in Pennsylvania, I came here to New York, where I have family. I had an aunt who was living here… She left Cuba in the ’40s. So I was lucky to have my family here; they were very supportive. So the first time I went to Miami, I went there as a musician.

TP:   So you became an American professional musician in New York.

IB:   This is my town. I was born and raised here in New York.

TP:   What sorts of things were you doing early? Latin Jazz and Salsa, or…

IB:   It is hard for me to remember. The first gig I did with my good friend, the late Mario Rivera, who was a great musician. He had a band called the Salsa Refugees, and I think that was my first gig. That band was composed of the late Hilton Ruiz, Andy González, Jerry González, Steve Turre and Mario Rivera. Then I started playing with a band called Tipica Novero(?—30:18), where I was playing timbales. That was the first time in my life I played timbales. I never played timbales in Cuba. I never played percussion in Cuba.

TP:   You never played percussion in Cuba.

IB:   Ever. In my life. No. Also, don’t forget, I was a rebel, and I wanted to be a jazz drummer, and that was the music that was prohibited. I was reluctant to play other things. Which I regret. Also, the first time I started playing congas, I realized that my hands hurt a lot. I said, “No-no-no, this is not for me.”I didn’t want to have any callouses on my hands. I like my soft hands.

TP:   So you moved from Cuba into a very different pan-Latin community, New Yorkers but also people from different parts of the Afro-Caribbean region.

IB:   Yes.

TP:   What was that like for you aesthetically? Did it have an impact on your way of thinking about music?

IB:   No, not at all. Well, I put things into perspective, and I said, “Well, this is a different ballgame now—you have to adapt.” I like baseball a lot. You have to adapt now to this new league. Believe me, I was very happy to be here. My main concern back in the days was that the Cuban government had my family as hostage in Cuba and that I didn’t know how to speak English. It was terrible. I always tell people, “Can you imagine if I take you now to Beijing and I leave you there and say, ‘now you’re going to live here.’” It was terrible.  I don’t want to remember that. It was terrible being in a city, in a place where people were around you, talking, and you didn’t know what they were saying. I also remember that my friend, Andy González, Jerry González, they were very helpful back in the days.

But musically speaking, it expanded my horizons. I said, “Wow, this is something else.” Because I was living in a small pond, in Cuba, and then suddenly I was in the ocean, where you see every kind of fish! So it really opened my mind. It made me conscious of what I really wanted to do.

TP:   Andy and Jerry González had played with Dizzy around 1970, and I guess they were really getting into their own concept of hybridizing jazz rhythms with Afro-Cuban rhythms, which I imagine must have had a great appeal to you.

IB:   Oh, yes. I was very attracted to their approach to the music. That’s something they always tried to do, and I said, “This is what I want to do playing the drums.” But also, I have to be honest. I want to play straight-ahead jazz! That is my passion, and that’s what I’m here for.

TP:   Straight-ahead jazz means something a little different now than it did 25 years ago. Straight-ahead jazz means incorporating timba rhythms, 7/4, 9/4, as well as 4/4, and you’re someone who probably laid down a little bit of the information that helped some people do that.

IB:   Yes. But still, for me… I am going to be 55 years old in July. For me, my passion is playing straight-ahead swing—DING-DING-A-DING. Swing.

TP:   Not 7/4, not…

IB:   No. That’s my life.

[MUSIC: “Joao Su Merced”]

TP:   Hearing that brings up something we were discussing off-mike, that over the last 20 years, rhythms from Cuban popular music, from timba, have become part of the jazz mainstream, 7/4, 9/4 and so on, and your remark was, “I like that, but I like to play straight-ahead,” and also that in African music and Cuban music odd meters don’t really come into play.

IB:   Yes, that’s my opinion. I have never heard any bata or any Yoruba percussion rhythms playing 7/4 or 11-by-5 or… Probably I am getting old. I really respect and admire all the musicians who like to play those odd meters. But in African music, I don’t think there is any 11-by-something or 13-by-something. In Yoruban religion, I have been in a few ceremonies, and I have never seen anybody playing something for any saint in 11-something. Everything is 12/6. That’s what it is. I think that there is so much still that we can do with those meters.

Also, my theory about this is: I don’t talk in 11/4, I don’t walk in 9/4, I don’t walk in 6/4. So everything is like a 4. Everything has to swing. I haven’t found yet where those odd meters swing. That’s just my opinion. But in Afro-Cuban music, not odd meters. You don’t hear any… Now it is called timba, which I remember in the ’70s. That is not a new word. In the ’70s, when someone used to play with a popular band, like Van-Van or Ritmo Oriental or Conjunto Rumba Havana, if you asked me, “Hey, Ignacio, what is Tony doing?” my answer to you would be, “Oh, he’s playing timba; he’s playing with a timba groove.” That was in the ’70s. But when you listen to that kind of music, when you listen to timba, you’re not going to hear odd meters. The first thing that we have to keep in mind is that it is dance music, and the only people who dance with odd meters are countries where that music is the popular music, like Bulgaria for example. But in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, the Caribbean—no odd meters.

TP:   When did you join Dizzy Gillespie?

IB:   I joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1981. August…

TP:   You played with him pretty much until…

IB:   The story is, the first time I played with Dizzy Gillespie was by accident. That was in December 1980, when his drummer at the time got stranded in Boston, and Mario Bauza heard me playing in a rehearsal at Mario Rivera’s house, and he was the one who called Dizzy and told him about me. So by accident, I played with Dizzy that night, since his drummer got stranded and he called Mario and I went there and played with Dizzy. But I joined his quartet in 1981. Then I had to leave the band, because I had no status in the country. It was very hard for marielitos to travel. I left the band in 1983. When I became an American citizen in 1986, he called me back, and I was back with his quartet… Back then, it was a quintet with Sam Rivers on tenor. That went on until he died, doing his big bands, the 70th Anniversary Big Band, the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band, and then came the United Nations Orchestra. Most people think that I started playing with Dizzy with the United Nations Orchestra, but it was way before.

TP:   What things did you learn from him? He was almost as eminent a teacher as a musician, in terms of conveying information to further his concepts.

IB:   I learned a lot from Dizzy. We should blame him for this terrible English that I speak. He taught me… [LAUGHS] I learned a lot from him about the jazz tradition. I also learned a lot from Dizzy about the human aspect. But I learned a lot from the jazz tradition.

TP:   Was he very hands-on in showing you information?

IB:   He was a great human. Yeah. He was always teaching people, everybody, and always wanted to learn also. Dizzy used to call my room when we were traveling. He used to call me at 1 a.m. to talk about rhythms. I’d say, “Dizzy, man, I’m sleeping; come on, let’s talk tomorrow.” He was always into that.

TP:   A night owl. Through much of the ’90s, you were part of Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s bands.

IB:   Yes, I started playing with Gonzalo. After Dizzy passed away, I played for a while… Tito Puente put together a band called The Golden Latin Jazz All-Stars. I think that band went on for four years or so. Then in 1997, I started playing with Gonzalo. We played together for ten years. First we were playing as a trio. We recorded his first album for Blue Note, Inner Voyage, then came Super Nova, and then we recorded Paseo as a quartet. That’s when he hired Felipe Lamoglia, and we played as a quartet for a while. Then, when I did my album and I went on my own, I think it was time for me to do my thing, and he also wanted a change, I think…

TP:   Talk about the collaboration. The band evolved greatly during that time, and it could go from great complexity, complex polyrhythms, to elemental swing.

IB:   Yes. Gonzalo’s music is very complex. So the point for me was to make those complex things look easy. We talk about it. He knew what I was able to do. He was very hard on me. The stuff that he wrote for me, he make my life miserable, but he knew that I was able to do it. For example, that record Paseo is one of the greatest things that I have ever recorded, as well as one of the most difficult, or the most difficult thing that I have recorded. The thing is to make that look easy. But still, as much complex as it is, you can hear…

TP:   The music breathes.

IB:   Exactly. The Cuban music is there.
[MUSIC: “Woody ‘n You”]

For Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s 54th Birthday, a Downbeat Feature From 2015

The singular pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba turns 54 today. I’ve been fortunate to have several opportunities to write about Gonzalo, most recently in 2015, when I spent some time with him and the members of his amazing group, Volcán, in Barcelona. I’ve pasted below that most recent piece (written for Downbeat), which also discusses the circumstances behind his epic CD Suite Caminos.

*_*_*_*

On November 24^th the quartet Volcán—pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, all 52, and electric bassist Jose Armando Gola, 37—convened at Barcelona Conservatory’s L’Auditori for the opening installment of a fortnight of consecutive concerts across Europe. To conclude their 90-minute soundcheck-rehearsal, the drummers launched the dark, elemental rumba beats that bedrock Rubalcaba’s “Sin Punto,” documented on Volcán’s eponymous 2013 CD [5Passion]. Hernandez flowed through endless clave permutations; Hidalgo, unable to hand-strike his six-conga set because of an infected finger, deployed sticks in a way that made them sound like a new instrument; Rubalcaba goosed the dance with darting lines, stacking and signifying upon the rhythms.

“We travel through time,” Hidalgo said shortly thereafter in the dressing room. “Every night, we jump from 1910 to the present, differently every night. It’s one of the most avant-garde groups ever.” This was a spot-on description of the ensuing concert, in which the ensemble synchronously navigated seven Rubalcaba charts with kinetic grace and freewheeling discipline, switching on a dime between ideas suggested by the codes of danzon, son, mambo, guaguanco, rumba, songo and timba. Rubalcaba himself improvised with an orchestral conception, executing harmonically erudite, percolating lines and phantasmagoric shapes on piano and Korg, sometimes at levels of propulsion and metric complexity that transformed him into the ensemble’s third drummer, sometimes at levels of dynamic nuance that evoked conductor Simon Rattle’s encomium that he is “the world’s most gifted pianist.”

“Gonzalo makes even something very complicated very easy,” Hernandez had remarked the previous evening. “He writes transparently, logically, super-precise, putting on paper exactly what he hears in his head.” He observed that, whereas three decades ago in the pathbreaking, Havana-based ensemble Grupo Proyecto that they co-founded in 1984, Rubalcaba “sometimes experimented with a chord or a rhythm at a certain point, now there’s nothing to change. Then, Gonzalo was the centerpiece of everything—the arrangement, the improvisation. Now he shares more. He lets the others help.”

In 1992, Rubalcaba moved from Cuba to the Dominican Republic; in 1996 he moved to Miami. Concurrently, Hernandez migrated to Italy, then settled in New York. They next made music together in 2012, when guitarist Stefan Glass called Rubalcaba, Hernandez, Hidalgo and Gola—Rubalcaba’s frequent partner since 2001—for a Miami recording session.

On the second day, Hidalgo approached Rubalcaba—they first met in 1980, when the conguero came to Havana with the Puerto Rican group Batacumbele—with a proposition: “We need to do a quartet, and its name is going to be The Fourth Volcano.”

“That was it,” Hernandez confirmed. “We didn’t have to say it twice.”

“My response was, ‘Of course we should do that,’” Rubalcaba said. He immediately began to coalesce repertoire. “The idea is to propose a new music—to play original pieces but also versions of important compositions in the history of Latin music, whether Cuban, Brazilian, North American or Mexican, that contain both the past and the way we see it now. Everyone has a strong relationship with jazz vocabulary and a deep connection to Cuban and Afro-Cuban roots, not only musically but spiritually and as a religion. Everyone has space to expose what they can do individually, but at the same time the band works as a band. Our purpose is musical creation, not a commercial thing.”

Volcán was Rubalcaba’s third recording for 5Passion, which he co-founded in 2010 with Gary Galimidi, the CEO of Gables Engineering, a South Florida-based manufacturer of avionic controls. They met that March, after Rubalcaba played a concert in Homestead, Florida, supporting the 2008 CD Avatar, which featured a New York-based quintet comprising Yosvany Terry on alto saxophone, Michael Rodriguez on trumpet, Matt Brewer on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums. It was his 14^th album for Blue Note, concluding a relationship that began in 1990 with Discovery: Live in Montreux, a trio date with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian that introduced Rubalcaba’s pianistic and recompositional brilliance and abiding soulfulness to the international jazz community.

Circa 2008, Rubalcaba was looking for “people who provoke me to react differently. It’s better they use their own speech, even if they phrase differently than a Cuban musician. I become a reference, an example in some way that seduces them to trust what I am doing. I was thinking that New York is home to a new generation of players, many of them friends, even roommates, with a new voice that results from a new technology, a new way to listen to music, to get information, to dress, to live.”

For Terry, Rubalcaba’s musical production has consequentially influenced the contemporary New York sound. “I hear Gonzalo’s influence in many people, not just Cuban musicians or pianists,” he said. “Musicians I work with have Gonzalo’s CDs in their iPhones or iPads or iPods. Pianists are looking at the sound he produces, his choice of notes and rhythms, the musical decisions for his compositions. Drummers are fascinated because of the challenge he poses. He played the instrument, and all the parts make sense—he writes specifically for the exact register, color and timbre he’s looking for.”

“I did piano for a career, but the truth is that I have a percussionist inside,” Rubalcaba clarified. His father, pianist Guillermo Rubalcaba, ran rehearsals at home that included master percussionists Tata Güines and Changuito, from whom Gonzalo learned the Afro-diasporic codes by example. He “showed aptitude” for timbal, claves and bongos, and received a drum for his sixth birthday. “I saw the drum, sat down, took the stick, and played.” Soon thereafter, Hernandez recalls, his parents called him to the television to see Rubalcaba, in short pants, drumming in Guillermo Rubalcaba’s family band.

“I had many different simultaneous references,” Rubalcaba said. He soaked up folkloric chants, dances and rituals in his Centro Havana neighborhood, and heard his father’s LPs of jazz, Cuban music and the Euro-canon. His older brother, Jesus, practiced Liszt, Chopin and Beethoven on a daily basis. “But percussion had a special space. It wasn’t just for colors and flourishes. It was a first plane, a first voice. When I write music, I see myself playing the drum part and the percussion part. The percussion is essential in the musical speech I am trying to put together, so the percussionists in my band will be pushed to do a lot.”

Rubalcaba pushed hard to bring Avatar to fruition. Although Blue Note head Bruce Lundvall was a life-long friend, the label, itself circumscribed by sagging music industry economics, had long ceased to provide adequate infrastructural support for tours or album marketing, and was reluctant to provide Rubalcaba a budget sufficient to actualize the project to his exacting standards. Still, Rubalcaba decided, as the saying goes, to turn lemons into lemonade. “In Cuba we had nothing, not even instruments in good shape or places to rehearse, and were able to execute the music at a high level,” he said. “I realized I could spend my own money, or find an investor. The important thing was to connect with new musicians.”

When he met Galimidi, with Avatar concluded, Rubalcaba figured he had fulfilled his contractual obligations to Blue Note and was looking for a change. So was Galimidi, who “had been saving my money and was thinking about getting into some other business.” A long-standing fan of Rubalcaba and a self-described “frustrated musician” who “plays badly,” he’d purchased 20 tickets to the Homestead concert for his employees. One, who had known Rubalcaba in Cuba, asked the pianist to receive his boss backstage. Galimidi recalls that he shook Rubalcaba’s hand and received an autographed piano key; in Rubalcaba’s version, they didn’t meet. Whatever the case, the employee called Rubalcaba on the following day to extend Galimidi’s invitation for lunch. Himself an habitue of flight simulators and one-time owner of a high-octane Porsche, Rubalcaba accepted.

Their connection was immediate. Galimidi recalls Rubalcaba’s comment “that the money had dried up, which I understand—you put in a tremendous amount of money and don’t get much out.” He continued: “You need to be doing this for some reason other than return on investment. When I woke up the next day, I realized that I could fund his records, I’d learn about music and recording, and my wife, who is a graphic designer, could be involved. To me, it was a no-brainer, because Gonzalo can produce the shit out of anything. You just give him money, a studio, and help him call the people.

“I want people to know who he is, that what he does is divine. He plays, and he grabs your soul. You have no choice but to listen.”

Upon hearing Galimidi’s proposal to partner on a label that would allow him “to make music without restriction” and eventually to own his masters,” Rubalcaba recalled, “I thought I was dreaming.” After an offer of “very significant money” for Rubalcaba’s entire Blue Note catalog fell through, they spent $5,000 to release him from a provision that gave Blue Note a three-album option over a 56½-month span.

Then they discussed names. “Gonzalo suggested taking number-5, cinco, and putting the word ‘passion’ (which in Spanish has one ‘s’) behind it,” Galimidi said. “If you say it in Spanish, it’s ‘syncopation.’ Gonzalo was raised in santeria, and the number of his saint, Oshún, is 5. My wife developed the butterfly-like figure in the logo, which we trademarked, so that you can read it as either one ‘s’ or two.”

“It has been an amazing experience,” Rubalcaba said. “It’s so difficult to find someone who believes in the human being as a person, not in the numbers. I believe in Gary totally, and I know he believes in everything I do. We win together and we lose together.”

As if to signify on these sentiments, Rubalcaba launched 5Passion with Fé (Faith), a solo meditation on the classical and folkloric canons of Cuba and the points at which they intersect with jazz. He plays with restraint and refined intention, honing in on lyric essences. He followed it with XXI Century, a double CD with Brewer and Gilmore, joined on various selections by guitarist Lionel Loueke, conguero Pedrito Rodriguez and drummer Ignacio Berroa, who played on all of Rubalcaba’s trio and quartet albums between 1998 (Inner Voyage) and 2006 (Paseo). Fortified by several days of immersive rehearsal and studio time, they stretch out on pieces by Rubalcaba, Loueke and Brewer, and find fresh paths into works by Bley, Bill Evans and Lennie Tristano.

On last year’s Suite Caminos, Rubalcaba unleashes the full measure of his powers on an eight-section recitative scored for alto saxophone (Will Vinson), tenor saxophone (Seamus Blake), trumpet (Alex Sipiagin), guitar (Adam Rogers), bass (Brewer) and drums (Ernesto Simpson), a coro of high-level Miami-based Yoruba practitioners, and himself on piano, synths, and church organ. He refracts the rhythms and melodies of specific Yoruba deities/orishas that, as author Ned Sublette writes in the program notes, “embody complex natural forces,” each “with its own gender and personality” and “its own set of multiple selves.” “The music was fearsomely difficult,” Vinson said, implying how Rubalcaba’s narrative represents the multi-dimensionality of his subjects. “We learned the parts over four or five days in the studio, but trying to feel your part, and fit it in with the rhythms, and navigate the sound and articulation in unison with Seamus and Alex made it 10 times more difficult.”

Suite Caminos gestated in 1995, after Rubalcaba completed Antigua, his first systematic exploration of Yoruban roots. During the ensuing 18 years, he worked not only with his own diverse bands, but performed Baroque, Impressionist and Spanish piano music and collaborated on tango projects with Richard Galliano and Al DiMiola, pan-Brazilian concerts with João Bosco and Ivan Lins, and on two albums of boleros—both instant classics—with Charlie Haden.

“I took risks to develop myself both as a piano player and a composer,” Rubalcaba said. “I put myself in contact with different spaces and musical visions, with people who wanted me to do things their way. Even when you are not totally comfortable with their ideas, you can always learn. Life is a palette with many tastes and flavors and colors and moments. If one moment is not sweet or illuminated, you try to be part of the darkness and force yourself to turn it into something bright. Even early in my career, when I had media exposure and Blue Note spent a lot to give me the privilege to play before large audiences at big venues around the world, I never was drunk with the applause. When I got home, I’d try to reset everything. I saw reviews or heard people say, perhaps with reason, ‘Well, he just played like that guy, he played fast,’ and so on. I considered every reaction, even when people didn’t express it in the best way. When you decide to live like that, the process is really long. You can feel really alone.

“So this work didn’t come to me like a revelation: ‘Ok, now I am in position to do this.’ It emerged from accumulating tools and reference and knowledge from a half-century of love, memory, and experience, so that I felt strong enough to do it as I did. In each tune, the chant talks about a specific issue of life for a human being.”

In Terry’s view, Suite Caminos “could only come from someone who immersed himself in the religious traditions that still exist in Cuba and prevail in the countryside. It contains a depth of spiritual understanding that speaks to a larger community than just musicians. I believe it’s the same spiritual feeling that was behind Mozart or Bach with the St. Matthew’s Passion or with the Requiem, and all of the great composers of sacred music.”

Rubalcaba explicates the opening selection, “Sendero De Aliento”—scored for vocals, Afro-Cuban percussion with batas, and church organ—as “talking about the very fine line between life and death,” he said. “The organ for me spiritually represents a lot of Christian and Catholic sound. When I visit cities like New York or Barcelona or Madrid, I try to visit churches, and often I’ve had the opportunity to see someone playing.” As an instance, he recalled being the only corporeal attendee at a female organist’s performance of a contemporary piece in St. Thomas Episcopal Church in midtown Manhattan. “I believe that the saints were also there, and the spirits that I know as part of my family tradition—exactly what we are not commonly able to see,” he said. “I try to connect with that.”

In the wake of his father’s death in September, Rubalcaba is the last surviving member of his immediate family, no longer in a position to glean counsel and friendship from Lundvall, who died in May, or Haden, who died in July 2014. “I felt alone, but it’s not true,” he said. This notion is the animating imperative driving Charlie, on which Rubalcaba joins Vinson, Rodgers, Brewer and Gilmore through melodic, inflamed-soul treatments of his reharmonized charts of eight Haden originals and his own “Transparence.” The latter piece appears on the concurrently issued Tokyo Adagio (Impulse!), documenting an inspired 2005 Rubalcaba-Haden duo performance at Tokyo’s Blue Note.

“We created an environment for Charlie’s spirit to be there, rather than duplicating anything Charlie did on some day,” Rubalcaba said. “When we were recording, I was touring, talking, laughing with Charlie. We have to learn to continue life without the people we love, at least without seeing them every day. You have to find strong convictions about other ideas. This is what keeps you working, dreaming, living, playing.”

For Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s 51st Birthday, A DownBeat Feature From 2006

Master pianist-composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba turns 51 today. Three years ago, I posted a couple of interviews and a review of his brilliant self-produced solo piano album, Faith. They might provide an interesting context for the DownBeat feature, posted below, that I was given the opportunity to write in 2006.

 

* * *

Since he emigrated from Cuba in 1992, Gonzalo Rubalcaba has embodied the adage  that discretion is the better part of valor, communicating to his public primarily through the medium of notes and tones.

“If you talk about things far away from your main function, it gives people an opportunity to be confused,” the pianist  said. “It’s frustrated me that people refer to me in two directions—politically or about virtuosity. I am not a political man, but like everyone I have a right to express my feelings about my country, its history, the government. But people have interpreted my words as though I were a politician speaking, and the repercussions are heavy.”

One such repercussion was a picket line whose members spat, threw bottles and waved Cuban flags to greet Rubalcaba on the occasion of his Miami debut in 1996. But during a week in New York last June in support of his current release, Solo [Blue Note], Rubalcaba, who is now a U.S. citizen, spoke at length on the aforementioned subjects, on aesthetics, and on his own personal history.

“I try to be balanced; nothing in this life is black or white,” Rubalcaba said. “To make the more radical people in the Cuban community feel happy about you, you have to adopt a certain a way of speaking, and apparently I never did it. The other part of the community says, ‘You are a Communist; you should say that everything is bad.’ I had serious health problems from the time I was born, and I never went outside Cuba for treatment. It wasn’t only because of that—we have our faith, our hope, things we really believe. But I was treated by wonderful doctors and a great hospital. Why not say that? It’s my truth. Now that’s destroyed. I have to support my mom in Cuba, send her medicine, money, everything to keep her alive.”

From the distance of exile, Rubalcaba notes, he is “in a stronger position to discover what happened in Cuban history.” On the other hand, despite the large Cuban emigre population and strong Latino culture in Miami, an hour south of Rubalcaba’s home, he is no longer directly connected to the Cuban street, and therefore is cut off from the raw materials that fed his imagination in formative years.

How has he sustained his muse? “One thing is to be updated about what happens in your country,” he responded. “Another is to have that sense of nationality inside you. You can’t explain it, but you feel that way, and that’s enough. That makes you different, because since birth you put together what you saw and heard, what they told you, the spectrum of colors and sounds, how you understand light, your sense of rhythm, the way you walk and speak and communicate. How to live.”

In the process of putting together Solo, a lyric meditation on the classical and folkloric canons of Cuba and the points at which they intersect with jazz, Rubalcaba, 43, thought long and hard about issues of identity.

“I’ve always looked for music as a space where I can throw everything I know and feel,” he said. “The ability to get into different styles and languages is typical in Latin-American musicians. They move around the world, assimilating everything possible to make them powerful artists. And the way they think they are powerful is working in different areas. For example, a lot of writers work in musicology, in novels, in social studies. In music, we see the same. It’s not just Cubans. Astor Piazzolla left Argentina looking to develop his career. He established himself in Paris, and when he returned to Argentina he was criticized because nobody understood exactly what he was doing with the tango. But the tango we hear today is 100 percent Piazzolla.”

On Solo, Rubalcaba applies that paradigm, interpreting 20th century Cuban composers—“serious” music by Almadeo Roldan, Sergio Fernando Barroso, and Rolando Bueno, boleros by Rafael Hernandez (“Silencio”) and Conseulo Velazquez (“Besame Mucho”)—and signifying upon them with his own syncretic pieces.

“European culture had a strong presence in Cuba in the ’30s and ’40s,” Rubalcaba said. “Composers like Roldan and Alejandro Garcia Cartula, for example, used tools from the European school to tell their own stories, their own roots and traditions, on the level that we know as classical music.”

As an example, he analyzed Roldan’s “Cancion de Cuna del Niño Negro (Lullaby For A Black Child),” which appears on Solo. “The melody is not exactly a folk melody, but Roldan’s vision of how a folk melody sounds, and he placed it in a form that mirrors Europe,” he said. “There is the ambiance of the Impressionist composers. But the score shows us that the left hand, the ostinato, does not work as a French or Russian composer would do it. It’s against the beat, as in popular Cuban music—as we dance, as we accent and phrase our speech. My challenge was to combine the worlds of interpretation—my vision of that music—and improvisation.”

Asked if the experience of living in another culture has illuminated the raw materials of his formative years and made them resonate in different ways, he responded affirmatively.

“This depends on each person,” he added. “For example, people in Cuba refused to use cowbell or congas or maracas or timbales; they said that the real music was straight ahead and bebop. They moved. A few years later, after you’re supposed to see them work with the top representatives of the hardest music in the world, they start to include bongos and congas. Are we talking about feelings or a pose? Many people adopt things because they believe it’s a way to call attention to themselves and to appear in front of people as the most pure, 100 percent national from Cuba or wherever.”

Rubalcaba carries the Cuban vernacular in his DNA. His grandfather, Jacobo, who lived in Pinar del Rio, Cuba’s westernmost province, was a conductor, a brass player, and a noted composer of danzons, such as “El Cadete Constitucional,” which Rubalcaba performed on Super Nova, a 2002 trio project. His father, pianist Guillermo, still active at 78, spent the ’50s with the charanga orchestra of Enrique Jorrin, inventor of the cha-cha-cha; he now directs Charanga Rubalcaba, a traditioncentric unit, and has toured over the past decade with such nostalgia ensembles as the Afro-Cuban All Stars and Buena Vista Social Club.

At 6, Rubalcaba asked his parents for a drum. “It was not easy to find an instrument at that time in Cuba, but they found a very rustic drum,” he said. “I played it and the timbales, congas, bongos, and maracas in our family band. So I went into music through percussion. When I was of age to apply to the classical school, they rejected me. I had no rhythm sense, they said. My father and one brother refused the test result. They repeated the test in front of them, and I passed. I wanted to be in the percussion department, and they said I wasn’t the right age; I had to choose between piano or violin, and my mom persuaded me to choose piano. In my second year I got lucky with a teacher, and I developed. A few years later, the principal asked if I still wanted to be part of the percussion department, and I said, ’Yes, but I don’t want to leave the piano.’”

He grew up in Centro Havana, a neighborhood he describes as not unlike a U.S. inner city district. “Simple people, full of folklore. Street people. Tough people. You’d see a wonderful party, religious or not religious, and at the same time a big fight and a knife. That was a tremendously strange picture, because I was living in that reality but getting Mozart and Beethoven and Impressionism at school.

“The classical school in Cuba talks too much about European music and not about Cuban traditions or folklore,” Rubalcaba continued. “One of our mistakes, as with all revolutions in history, was trying to eliminate our past. When my generation were kids, the revolution was trying to create a society where everything was new, so we had problems being able to listen to Arsenio Rodriguez or Celia Cruz or Cachao or Beny More or Peruchin or Bebo Valdes or Frank Emilio. We heard Spanish pop music and music from Eastern Europe. Jazz was prohibited; it was the music of the enemy. They prohibited rock musicians because they did not want the new revolutionary young people to be dressed like them with long hair—this was synonymous with capitalism.”

While immersing himself in the European legacy by day, Rubalcaba spent evenings in various Havana venues playing with the giants of Cuban pop—Orquesta Aragon and Los Van Van, singers Omara Portuendo and Elena Bourque, salsero Isaac Delgado. He crystallized those influences into the funky timba style that would become Cuba’s lingua franca in the ‘90s, and also into a distinctive jazz vision, one deploying unstoppable technique towards articulating a sensibility that drew on the harmonic lexicon of Bill Evans and the follow-the-line imagination of Herbie Hancock.

Rubalcaba learned the codes of older Cuban styles first hand from his father and his cronies, a veritable who’s-who of Cuban pop. “I saw them discuss how to do this and that, telling the story of how the music was played 30 or 40 years before,” he said. “But I found a sound that matched the time I lived in. Timba is the bolero, cha-cha-cha, rumba, conga, danzon, proposed in a very contemporary way. It extended the tradition. Timba represents the dynamic of Cuban society, the way people think, look at things, make love. It’s also the way they criticize, which is ambiguous, because it’s their only outlet. They use that context to say what they usually cannot say.”

With the government’s permission, Rubalcaba emigrated from Cuba to the Dominican Republic in 1992, and moved to Florida in 1996. “I said that I would never choose the dramatic way—like taking a boat or swimming—to emigrate anywhere,” he said. “I knew the United States was the country where I should live. But I wanted to make that move with my family. To leave them and not know when I could see them again would have destroyed me mentally. So if we can do it together, that’s fine. If not…”

Rubalcaba departed at the onset of Cuba’s “special period,” when the regime, adjusting to the endemic economic and social problems spurred by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the concurrent loss of Russian subsidy, began to treat its musicians as exportable commodities. The repercussions to which he refers began full-force on the occasion of his American debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center in December 1993, four years after the U.S. State Department denied him a visa and forced the cancellation of a concert. In a New York Times profile before the event, Paquito D’Rivera, who had defected 13 years earlier under arduous circumstances, stated that the Cuban government was using Rubalcaba, saying, “they want to avoid his escaping, so they give him more freedom than anybody in Cuba has.”

“A few months earlier, I joined a double-bill concert in Valencia with my Cuban Quartet and Paquito’s group,” Rubalcaba recalled. “We saw each other at the soundcheck, and he was very gentle and sweet. I played first and he closed the show. He made a wonderful speech about me in front of the audience. Everything was fine.”

A few days before the concert, Blue Note President Bruce Lundvall invited D’Rivera to an informal welcoming party for Rubalcaba at the label’s offices. “I said, ‘Why not?’” Rubalcaba said. “I saw Paquito arrive. But when the party started, some people asked for pictures. Everybody came together—and Paquito disappeared without a word. It was a strange move. A mystery. I was in the middle of an intense schedule of interviews, and one guy gave me a letter Paquito had written for the New York Times. The minimum thing he said was nasty. I couldn’t respond. I had nothing to respond to.”

“I was among the first invited guests to arrive at the reception,” D’Rivera recalled by email. “Mr. Rubalcaba apparently wasn’t aware that when the press photographers asked for pictures, Don Lucoff, who was doing public relations for the company, discreetly called me to a corner and asked me to please stay away from the cameras, because Gonzalo was nervous that taking his picture with me on it could make it to the newspapers. Humiliated and deeply hurt, I quietly ran out, only to find out that Gonzalo had declared to the media that ‘Life in Cuba is not that bad.’ It was not that bad for him,  authorized by the Cuban dictatorship to reside abroad with his family, while most honorable Cuban families — mine included — were divided by that same government he was representing. I replied throughout the New York Times and other publications.”

Through the ensuing years, Rubalcaba developed and sustained an international career while absorbing slings and arrows from various factions of the Cuban diaspora. “It wasn’t just people involved in politics, but musicians, not only Paquito, but Arturo Sandoval, Manuel Valera, and many others, including people from my generation, people who played with me in Cuba, who know me personally,” he said. “They invented arguments, distorted my life, my essence as a human being. The motivation cannot be personal, because I never had a problem with any of them. I don’t know if it was politics or professional jealousy.

“The people who were forced to leave Cuba in the ’60s and ’70s lost everything, and we should respect their pain. They were separated from their families. They didn’t want to leave. They were forced to do it; they had a different point of view in terms of ideology and politics. I don’t feel able to criticize their position. I just want to know more about them. But this is not their position about the new generation. They attack and criticize. Not only that, they don’t give you space to be part of the society. I think they lost time talking about me, writing little letters. I know what I’m saying is kind of hard, but this is the way that I think.”

“At the beginning, I was a bit rushed, and pushed by the record company,” said Rubalcaba, contextualizing the bravura soloist-over-rhythm section quality of his numerous early ’90s all-star trio albums. “I was still in the process of feeling comfortable and safe. It took time to be part of the musical reality of the States, and meanwhile I was supposed to do something.”

As is evident on the trio disks Inner Voyage (1998) and Super Nova, Rubalcaba worked hard to assimilate the nuances of jazz syntax into his presentation. “Gonzalo just now is getting a real feel for playing trio piano,” said Ron Carter, who is responsible for the more conversational quality of Diz, Rubalcaba’s 1994 trio homage to the music of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. “He’s learned not to feel so responsible for all the ideas—all the good nights and bad nights—and to let the chips fall where they may. He understands some things are out of his control, which frees him to be even more creative.”

“I don’t pretend to be the best jazz player in the world,” Rubalcaba said. “A lot of reference and influence comes from jazz, but I am looking for something beyond that. When I heard my father’s records of Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, what put me in orbit was the importance of improvisation within the jazz form, how musicians interact and create another story in relation to the main thing, like composing another piece. Everybody was able at the same time to say their speech and their voice, and collaborate as a group. Then the question was to figure out what sign gave them the green light to develop this speech—how they came to play those harmonies and chords, how the bass player decided what line to do behind the saxophone player. With time, I understood that it wasn’t only about musical knowledge, but about spirituality, instinct, conversation.”

Rubalcaba referred to a family friend who taught him to read music. “At the beginning he told me: ‘Read music as you read the newspaper. You don’t know exactly what the newspaper will say tomorrow. But you get it and start to read.’ The music is an idiom, a language you have to control. Later I had composition lessons with Roberto Valera, a great contemporary Cuban composer. He said, ‘I will give you the tools to get a good balance, instrumentation, a good sound. But you have to feel the need to say things your own way, and I cannot teach you to do that.”

Not one to take his creative process for granted, Rubalcaba sustains freshness with a regimen reminiscent of a chess grandmaster.

“I have been touring for many years literally around the world—different contexts, different audiences, different weather,” he said. “But offstage is the time to look inside, to create a platform for developing my thoughts. I have a strict discipline, which I enjoy. At home, I wake up, and spend a minimum of 4-5-6 hours working with the instrument. Sometimes the work is technical. Sometimes I make time to read music that I am not going to play, which helps you think and interpret fluidly. How did composers in a certain period work? What harmonic ideas and harmonic statements did they develop? Why did Bill Evans or Monk or Peterson or Jelly Roll Morton play in the way they did? What historical moment made possible a figure like Duke Ellington? You don’t leave that in the room where you studied. You bring your knowledge with you. It helps you preserve the attitude to try to invent when you’re on stage.

“Talent and imagination is good, but not enough. I believe 100 percent in the history and culture of jazz. But there’s also a lot to learn about our music that nobody knows yet—especially the folkloric, religious music, which is so rich. There is also still a lot to hear from Europe. You find points in common. Roldan and Garcia Cartula were focused on developing their own heritage, but were also open to an interchange of opinions, of tools to do their music. They were fresh until the end of their lives. Everything they did contained something new, some risk, which to me is the most important thing in music.”

It is unclear when Rubalcaba will next have an opportunity to share his explorations with audiences in his homeland, where he has performed only once—at the 2002 Havana Jazz Festival—since he emigrated. “During those years, people around the world asked me, ’Why don’t you play in Cuba?’” he recalled. “I always said, ’Because they don’t want me to play there. When they extend an invitation, we’ll discuss conditions.’ Finally the invitation came, and I said, ’Why not?’ Against many people. But I was not thinking about those people. I was thinking that I had that responsibility. Many people came to see the show. But my feeling about the trip was split. On the one side, I had the joy to see my family, that people who really love me had the opportunity to see me play after many years. I hate to say it, but I also found mediocrity and jealousy, terrible actions from professionals, from musicians. Very sad.

“When the airplane started to fly over the island, when I saw the color of the earth and everything down there, automatically I said to myself, ’That’s Cuba; that’s my country; I feel that I am from here.’ Hours after, I still believed that, but I add something. I know I’m from here. I can feel it and smell it. But I am not any more part of that. It’s a big contradiction.”

At risk of amateur psychoanalysis, one might speculate that Rubalcaba’s Oedipal break from the fatherland has liberated his spoken voice. “I’m very happy saying what I’m thinking now,” he said. “I am not going too far. I think that to speak in this way now gives you the opportunity to speak that way tomorrow.”

 

Gonzalo Rubalcaba (Part 3) — WKCR, June 29, 2006

Gonzalo Rubalcaba (June 29, 2006, WKCR):

[Gonzalo was playing at the Jazz Standard with Matt Brewer and Jeff Waits, after two nights performing solo, and a few days after performing three piano duos with Herbie Hancock at Carnegie Hall.  Solo [Blue Note] had just come out.]

TP:   In the liner notes to Solo, you write, “For a long time, people at every event have asked me, ‘When will you do a solo CD?’ Today this work is already a memory for me, resulting from the many hours of listening, observing, evaluating, criticizing, and reevaluating. I have come to the conclusion that although this is a solo album, I have never been more accompanied. My history, nostalgia, memories, affection, faith, and the multitude of the unseen companions of solitude, also from the profusion of signs and sounds coming to me also from these otherwise silent colleagues. I speak in these terms, because when I theorize over music and art in general, I feel the need to go beyond the limitations and restrictions of speech in describing the significance and life of the artist, the artistic process, the act of creation, and its product as it actually exists in the music. When I thought of an organized the music of this disk, I felt the necessity to create an album of secrets, letters and notes and photos, something like an aural diary. Everything has been openly stated in the most classic way. But more importantly, it is an album of intuition and courage, where the important messages are openly stated, but then echoed by murmurs, whispers and suggestion.”

So it has been a long time coming. And if someone had not heard a Gonzalo Rubalcaba record since, let’s say, 1995, they might be surprised at how much space and how much silence and how much restraint is embodied in your playing on Solo. I don’t know if that’s a question or not. But talk to me about the process of concretely preparing to do this date.

GONZALO:   I want to believe that right now I have so much music in my mind than before, just because I’ve accumulated a lot of reference, confrontations, stores, stories, memories. And I cannot put everything at the same time without a real and great organization. So I have to find the right space and form to translate all those memories, and give them the importance that each one has. So that obligated me to create kind of a performance where I had to be very careful in the way that I transmit it. Technically, musically, and in terms of spirituality, I think that this is one of the best moments in my career, where I feel very relaxed. I don’t know how to name it. But I feel very comfortable, very well-trained to do that—especially this record. It took me a long time to do it—partly because there’s a stipulation in my contract that I do a solo record at this point,  following the other records that I was supposed to do.  I appreciate that now, because I think there was not a better moment to do that.  I had now a better vision of what should be a solo record, taking a few factors into consideration. The Cuban tradition. My classical training. My relationship with the jazz idiom. The references coming from different kinds of players—classical players, jazz players, folk players, popular music. And composers from different moments of Cuban history, especially those composers of the 20th century that not many people know about, who were very compromised with the idea of creating a Cuban music not under the patterns that we heard in the music of Lecuona or in the music of the 19th century, but matching with the contemporary music coming from Europe, coming from America, but at the same time very authentically Cuban.

TP:   The composers you’re referring to are mostly early 20th century composers.

GONZALO:   Yes. We are talking about Amadeo Roldan, Alejandro Garcia Caturla… I’m speaking about composers that are part of the record, and others that are not part of the record. Leo Brouwer.  Among others. So that was a challenge for me, because I was supposed to do a record where it’s not 100% or even 90% improvisation, but where you have to create an interpretation of that music. The challenge was to prepare similarly to what a classical player has to do, and combine both worlds—the interpretation, my vision of that music, and at the same time the improvisation, and, on the other hand, my original compositions.

TP:   You’ve said that as a young player you didn’t  have access to the music by the Cuban composers you’re referring to, mainly because of the politics of the time, the way  ideology affected pedagogy and the creative process.  There’s an NPR show that aired last Sunday that’s up on the Internet in which you go into some detail. You said that to do this music, you basically had to deal with scores; it wasn’t possible to hear much of it. How does that function for you?

GONZALO:   What happened is that the program of the classical school in Cuba takes too much time and space talking about European tradition. They bring you  all the information about the different periods of classical music coming from Europe, and you know all about baroque, classicism, romantic, impressionism, avant-garde—all of them. It’s just at the end of the curriculum where they put you in contact a little bit with the Cuban composers, with the Cuban tradition in terms of Classical music. Which is not enough. So if you want to become a composer, you run the risk of being too much influenced by the European tradition, and  not doing the right thing, not putting your roots, putting your tradition to use  in the right way.  Some of the people who used to be part of my department had no knowledge about the Cuban music. They had no knowledge about the traditions…

TP:   You mean the folkloric traditions.

GONZALO:   Exactly. I had an advantage to be part of a large family with a very large tradition, very focused and very related with the Cuban history and the most popular Cuban musical styles. That gave me the opportunity to be in the middle of the essence of the Cuban music, but that was not the reality all the time. So it wasn’t until a few years ago when, thanks to a few people, I got those music parts coming from those composers, and I could see the way that they wrote the music, the way that they conceived the music, the vision of their music, and I could work with that. Not when I was in the school. I always said that was a big mistake, not having that information and that relationship with that music before, when we were part of the school.

TP:   Go into a little detail about your family. We played your grandfather’s composition. Who was he, and which bands did he play with?

GONZALO:   We’re talking about the beginning of the 20th century. So in the ‘20s, the ‘30s…

TP:   Is he from Havana himself?

GONZALO:   No. From Pinar del Rio, which is the western part of the island. He created his own school in this city and this town, because he thought there were a lot of talented people there without the possibility of going to a private school. So he helped them. He created his own band. He was a conductor also of the military band. But he trained young people. He gave them all the access to learn about how to read music, how to write music, and also how to play. He played some of the wind instruments, the brass section, like trombone and trumpet. But his main job was as a conductor.

So he created a big family, and he was a teacher in all his family. He taught my father, he taught all my uncles…

TP:   This is a tradition in Cuba, isn’t it. Cachao comes from that kind of family. Yosvany Terry comes from that type of family. Chucho Valdes. And there are many others.

GONZALO:   Exactly. That’s right. He became a very important reference in the music at that time, not only as a musician but as a professor and  a person that preserved many of the memories of the Cuban music coming from the 19th century. He also wrote some danzons like this one, “La Cadete Constitutional.” I think he wrote a little book about how to read music. So he was working in different directions—as a composer, as a professor, player, conductor. We give thanks to him to be part of that family and be part of that heritage.

TP:   Your father was an important part of the popular music culture of Cuba in the ‘40s and ‘50s. I’ve read that the cha-cha-cha dance comes from his band or was his idea.

GONZALO:   He was part of one of the most important charangas, which is the name that they give to those ensembles that used to play cha-cha-cha and so on. It was the Enrique Morin orchestra. So he became a piano player of this band in the ‘50s, and he was there for about ten years, and then he moved to another very old charanga that specialized in danzon. He became a piano player in this band, and at the end he became the director of this band, and he has been the director of this band until now. He collaborated with different people—with Arcaño, Barbarito Diaz… I know that many of those names mean nothing to many people here. But we’re talking about musicians that define the Cuban music in different styles. He is still working. He is still touring around. He has been part of those later ensembles, like the Afro-Cuban All-Stars, all those bands very well known now in America and Europe and around the world.

TP:   You played in his band as a teenager while you were in the conservatory, studying the European canon. So you would be playing in the conservatory by day, studying your Chopin and Liszt and Brahms and Beethoven, and at night you’d be in the clubs playing drums…or keyboards and drums.

GONZALO:   Yes. My father created a family band with my two brothers and myself (I’m the youngest one), and I played drums in that band. Also a few more friends from the neighborhood who were interested to do music…

TP:   Which neighborhood, by the way?

GONZALO:   The Centro Havana. I was born there. I remember since I was 6 years old, even before, being part of that group. So when I was 9 years old, that was the right time to get into the school. But until that moment, my first reference as a player was being part of that group with my father and my brothers and people from the neighborhood. I had no idea how to read music. I did everything by ear. That drum was a gift, coming from my mother and my father. When I got to 6 years, they asked me what I want, and I said, ‘I want a drum.” It was a difficult situation for them, because it was not easy to find an instrument at that time in Cuba. So we found somebody else, in a very far place… He used to do a very rustic drum! That was my first drum.

TP:   It was a conga?

GONZALO:   No, it was a drum.

TP:   A drum that you beat.

GONZALO:   Exactly. You have no idea how it looks.

TP:   Funky.

GONZALO:   Exactly. But I used to play also some Afro-Cuban percussion instruments, like the timbales, congas, bongos, maraccas. So I went into the music through the percussion.

TP:   So the core of your musical birth is through the drums, not the piano.

GONZALO:   The drums. The piano…it’s too much to say that it was an accident, because it’s not really. But I have to say that when I was of age to apply for a place in the classical school, they disapproved me. They said that I was not rhythmically able to play music.

TP:   What did they mean by that?

GONZALO:   No rhythm sense. That was their argument.

TP:   Did they mean that you didn’t understand the European legato…

GONZALO:   They used to do that apparently simple test where you had to reproduce what they sing and what they clap and things like that. And at the end, they decided that I didn’t pass. So my father and one of my brothers came to the school, and they asked for a meeting with the principal, and they refused the result of the test, and they wanted them to repeat that in front of them. So they did it, and I passed it. Part of the bureaucratic thing that is too long to explain; it doesn’t matter.

The next step was which instrument.  I was looking to be part of the percussion department, and they said, “no, you don’t have the right age; we have for you piano or violin.” That was a big trouble for me. I said, “I don’t like any of that music.” So my Mom was the one that made me decide about the piano. She said, “Piano is a great instrument that will help you in the future to compose, to write music, to have a different view about how to do music. Even if you decide not to become a piano player, it will help you, so you should do that, and we will see in the future if they can move you to the percussion department.” So I said, “Okay, I want to make you happy, and that’s it.” So I did it. The first year was kind of weird and difficult to me. One of the elements is that I didn’t get well-related with the teacher, so they asked to see if they could change the teacher for the second year, and that was the solution. I was very lucky with that woman who put me on the track to love the instrument, and then develop myself as a piano player. When I was in 5th or 6th year, the principal (it was a different principal already)  asked me if I still wanted to be part of the percussion department, and I said, “Yes, but I don’t want to leave the piano.” So they gave me the opportunity to do both things at the same time.

TP:   How does your percussion background filter into the way your piano playing?

GONZALO:   It’s the need to expose myself not only as a piano player but to expose my music as an ensemble. When I am playing the piano, I am not thinking about the piano as a single instrument. I try to put different levels of music and dynamics and texture and message at the same time with that instrument, using pedals, using different kinds of touch, holding some section of the instrument, and doing everything I can to make that music and the result of that music richer. That’s the only way. And the piano provides me that possibility more than any other instrument, because you can play that game with an instrument, getting different kinds of textures and holding the sound here, and playing around here, and using the piano as a percussion instrument but also as a melodic instrument. You can go for a different kind of dynamic. That’s the way that I conceive how to play that instrument.

TP:   Early in your career, you played and recorded with Jack DeJohnette, Paul Motian, Charlie Haden, John Patitucci, Ron Carter. More recently you’ve worked and recorded with Ignacio Berroa, the Cuban drummer who played with Dizzy Gillespie, who plays idiomatic Cuban rhythms and jazz rhythms with idiomatic precision as well. How does the drummer’s style filter into the overall conception of what you play? Would it be possible for you to play the type of music you played on Super Nova, let’s say, without a Cuban drummer? Or a drummer intimate with the codes of Cuban music.

GONZALO:   A good question. I think that music has different doors, and that is the important thing for me, that the music gives me the possibility to go with the same music in different directions, depending who is part of the band and the vision of the musicians as part of the band playing that music. Of course, this is music that contains a lot of Cuban codes, Afro-Cuban elements, and it will help a lot if the people involved are related with that.  It doesn’t mean that they have to do that in a very orthodox way. That’s totally the opposite of what I’m looking for. I’m looking to give the musicians the opportunity to be related with those codes and at the same time for them to apply what they know over those codes.

TP:   Now, you yourself were raised in those codes, because you played drums, and not only did you play them in popular music and dances before large groups of people, but also santeria and religious ceremonies.

GONZALO:   Yes.

TP:   So those codes also contain for you a narrative. If you hear a rhythm there’s a certain storyline or state of mind or state of being attached to it.

GONZALO:   Mmm-hmm. One good example of that is this record, Antiguo, which is based 100% on all the Yoruba culture. I took some of the chants, rhythms, and I speculated a lot with them, using a kind of electronic ensemble with synthesizers, computers, sequencing, but at the same time live musicians playing different kinds of drums, percussion, brass section, singers. I’m sure that music can be played by a symphony orchestra—it’s very possible. We should add to the symphony orchestra some instruments that are not part of the regular structure of the symphony. But it’s a music that was created with that vision of a big-big-big ensemble. So that music would absorb any kind of musician, any kind of player. This is what I’m looking for—a music without limitations, with a very clear starting point, but at the same time with a totally free road to work with.

TP:   Talk about how  your relationship with technique has evolved over the years.

GONZALO:   I know there’s a lot of points of view about technique and how to apply technique and how to use it, and also many prejudices about it. I want to state an example. Even Thelonious Monk, when you heard the latest Thelonious Monk recordings, you can hear Thelonious Monk clean, more clean, more specific about what he wanted to say, how he wanted to say that. He was not going around, but was going exactly to the point where he wanted to go. It was a technique in relation with the music he was doing; not in relation to something else coming from nowhere, but with the music he wanted to do. This is exactly what every musician should do. I mean, depending on the way you think. The music forces you to find different ways technically to express that, and to express that without confusion, clearly. This is probably the process that I have led to.

TP:   Did you study various jazz pianists deeply after emerging on the scene?

GONZALO:   I listened to a lot of them. But I wasn’t the typical student that looks into the book, looking for a transcription or something like that. I never tried to memorize any solo or any phrase or any style, because I thought it was kind of a limitation for me. I would say in the same way you read a book, you cannot memorize phrase by phrase. You memorize the content, the essence of a book. This is what I was looking for in the records. But I hate to go and try to play the transcription and play in the same way that everybody…

TP:   Conceptually, though, who were some of the pianists you paid attention to between 1989 and 1996?

GONZALO:   I can say names that I know influenced me a lot. One of them is Bill Evans. Keith Jarrett. Even before that, Chick and Herbie were two names important as a reference to me, not only as a player but as composers. Art Tatum at the very beginning of my career, along with Oscar Peterson. I remembered seeing Erroll Garner for the first time on a TV show that they broadcast in Cuba—just one piece. I really loved what I saw. Then I wasn’t able to see many people and to hear many of the jazz players. But I had a lot of references coming from Europe in terms of classical music, and also from Cuba. The recordings came from Czechoslovakia, from Russia, from Poland, from Bulgaria, and many of the artists were teaching in Cuba. So I had that mix of reference. Obviously at some moment of my life their influence was more present. It takes a long time to find yourself, It takes a long time to find your own way to say things. Especially when you are very ambitious about music, or you are in relation with many different kinds of music, especially the Cuban music that has many sides—and unfortunately, not many people know about how many sides that culture has.

I am very surprised now by the articles that talk about this Solo record; I feel there isn’t enough reference to talk about what I tried to say with those Cuban pieces, especially the classical pieces that I incorporated in that record. There’s an obvious comparison with the European styles, but there’s nothing deep about the form of those pieces, the language of those pieces, the meaning of those pieces, which are very related with our traditions, with our codes, our music. I don’t see that in the reviews. It’s like they pass that over. They say it sounds a little bit like Ravel, or we can see some of the Debussy influence… It could be very possible. Why not? We are talking about more or less the same times. But they don’t go deep into the structure of the piece, the meaning of the piece.  There’s a lot of elements that we could talk about, and we need the right reference.

[Rubalcaba selected “Cancun da Cuna del Nino Negro by Roldan; “Preludio en Conga” by Hilario Gonzalez, and “Homage to Hilario” by Rubalcaba]

TP:   In the program  notes, Gonzalo writes of Hilario Gonzales that he played his music while still in high school “as an antidote to too much Mozart and Beethoven.” You said that reviews of the new album insufficiently discussed your Cuban roots and the intent of the music. A few words about Amadeo Roldan and Hilario Gonzalez, the dynamics of what they did, and how they inspire you.

GONZALO:   We have to say, first of all, that Cuba has been a country that collaborates with many different cultures. A lot of great musicians from different parts of the world live in Cuba, different composers at different moments coming to Cuba to play their music, to teach, to get in relation with composers there, different kinds of emigration from different parts of the world—from China, from Poland, Latin America, South America. So Cuba  has been open all the time to confront a different kind of vision, a different kind of attitude about how to create arts—not only music, but painters, writers… It’s obvious that  the presence of  European culture was very strong for us in Cuba.

The good thing is that Cuban composers, especially in the ‘30s and ‘40s, took consciousness about what to do with those memories, with this tradition, with this influence coming from Europe, and totally transformed the Cuban music into something at the same level of what was happening in the rest of the world in terms of how to construct the music, especially music at that level—the music that we know as classical music. They took the tools from the European school, but they were talking about their stories, their roots, their traditions.

That was a good example, this one that we just heard from Amadeo Roldan. He took that melody, which is not exactly a folk melody, but his vision of how a folk melody sounds, and he put that into  a musical form very similar to the European form. But when we see the score, we see that the left hand and the way that ostinato is working,  isn’t the way that a French composer or Russian composer would do it. It’s totally against the time, against the beat, in the same way we do the popular music, in the same way we dance, and the same way we talk, the accent—the melody works over that. There’s a lot of elements. If we check the music score, we see that there is a very particular way to do the music. We can feel some ambiance coming from the European reference, especially the Impressionist composers. But the melody, the rhythm conception, is totally in relation with the popular Cuban music.

This is what is not there in the comments and the reviews. I feel unhappy, not about the record and not about me, but that people who have access to the record don’t have exactly the right reference when they listen to that music. Why? Because there’s not enough information about that side of the Cuban music, not only in the United States, but around the world. People know a little more now about Cuban popular music of the ‘30s and ‘40s, because of Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cubanismo… But there’s still a lot of things to discover about the Cuban music.

TP:   Do you see yourself as a mantle-bearer of the legacy of these composers whom you’re interpreting on records?

GONZALO:   I’m doing that because I like what they did.

TP:   I mean, you yourself as a composer. Is your aesthetic consciously referring…

GONZALO:   Definitely. Those composers, like Amadeo Caturla and Leo Brouwer, Farina, Roberto Valera, and all of them, I would say that it was the first generation to change the way to produce music in Cuba—with very bad luck. Nobody paid attention to what they were doing. Nobody believed in what they were doing. I don’t think they had enough support to promote the music, to promote their ideas, their conception about how to do music. But I think it is in our hands, my generation, myself, the responsibility in some way to talk about that, to revise that, to check that, to say, “Okay, let’s see what is true, what is the real thing about that, and let’s promote that.” I’m doing that, and at the same time I’m choosing what I like. It’s not that I’m blind about it and saying, “Oh, we should sound that because that’s the way to promote it.” No. I’m trying to combine both things, promote that and, at the same time, I choose to play exactly what I feel in connection with my wish, with my need.

TP:  A few words on the jazz you heard as a kid. Chucho Valdes told me that his father, the maestro Bebo Valdes, gave him a systematic pedagogy. He said, “Learn these things in order chronologically,” and he gave him Jelly Roll Morton, he gave him Tatum, he gave him Bud Powell. He did that. Since he lived in Cuba in the ‘50s, he could see musicians playing in Havana, and even play that music with them. You didn’t have that advantage, but you did have your father’s record collection. I’m wondering what it was in that record collection that made you (I’m assuming this) fall in love with jazz or be attracted to jazz at a young age, when it wasn’t part of your immediate environment in Cuba.

GONZALO:   I think it was the space to improvise.

TP:   Not one person, but the space.

GONZALO:   Exactly. That was the first thing that put me in orbit already with that music, and how much importance they gave to the improvisation. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have the space to improvise in the Cuban music. Every popular music, every folk music is based on improvisation, in that spontaneous act. We had to make a balance on the form of jazz as a music, We see that improvisation is very tied to the main part. I mean, it’s as important as a main section of the piece. That’s a little different than our own structure in our music. But that was the point. When I heard for the first time Art Tatum, I remember he had some record of Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie…

TP:   Benny Goodman with Teddy Wilson.

GONZALO:   Exactly. Charlie Parker. Among others. To me, the most relevant at that moment was the improvisation section, and that interchange, exchange, that interaction in between the musicians, how they interact, how they followed each other, and how they had to create another story in relation with the main thing during the improvisation section. It’s like they composed again another piece—connected with the piece, but in distinction to that. It made me be in love already with that music, even when I know that I was not able to understand many things that were happening in there.

TP:   I’m assuming when you say you weren’t able to understand many things that were in there, you’re referring to cultural codes that were hard to crack because of where you were. What were some of those codes, and which did you crack…

GONZALO:   Well, the first question at that time was how they developed this speech. How they arrived at that speech, and how they developed that imagination and that fantasy about the way they play harmonies and the chords, and how the bass player arrived to the conclusion that this was the line that he should do behind the saxophone player’s speech. All those questions were the first curiosity and secret for me. How is that? How do they produce that? What is the sign that gives them the green light to go in this way and to do that? Then with time, I understood that it wasn’t only about musical knowledge, but it was about spirituality, about instinct, about…as a conversation.

So I put together two things, that experience with the experience I had with a very important musician, a Cuban violin player, composer and teacher, Pedro Hernandez, in Cuba. He was part of the Barbarito Diaz Orquesta, he worked with Arcano, he worked with many great musicians in Cuba, and we were able to see him in person over many years because he was a friend of my family. He was the one that taught me how to read music. He said something from the beginning: “You have to read music in the same way that you read the newspaper. You don’t know exactly what the newspaper is going to say tomorrow. But you get it and you start to read.” So you have to read the music in that way, because the music is an idiom, is a language, and you have to have control of that.

Then on the other hand, I had at the end of my career the possibility to be trained by Roberto Valera, another great contemporary Cuban composer. I remember when we would start our lessons, our meetings talking about composition, he asked me, “What are you looking for here in this school?” I said, “I’m looking to learn how to compose.” He said to me, “I cannot teach you how to compose. That’s impossible. The first thing is that you need to say something. You have to feel the need and the necessity to say something. Then you are able to compose. I will give you the tools, the experience, the rules to get a good balance, instrumentation, a good sound, according to the reference we have. But you have to be able to say things in your own way, and I cannot teach you to do that.”

This is what I found also in jazz. Everybody was able to say at the same time their speech and their own voice, and collaborate as a group. That was the thing that really caught me from the beginning when I heard those records.

Gonzalo Rubalcaba (Part 2) — Interview, WKCR, December 5, 2004

Gonzalo Rubalcaba (WKCR, December 5, 2004):

[Gonzalo was performing with the New Cuban Quartet at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola]

TP:   What is the New Cuban Quartet? You state in the notes (to Paseo [Blue Note]), more or less, that at this point you feel free to revisit and reinterpret music that you have performed in the past as well as bringing out new music. The timeline seems to proceed past Irakere and Los Van Van up through Timba. What has brought you to this point?

GONZALO:   Exactly what you said. I used to work with the Cuban Quartet about 6 or 7 years, from 1990 to 1996 and ‘97. I produced a few records with them – Antigua, Live In USA, Four and Twenty [all on Blue Note via Toshiba-EMI]. There was a moment in November ‘96 that I moved to the United States. I was living in the Dominican Republic until that time, from 1990 to 1996. I moved to Florida with my family. Also I think that the Cuban Quartet at that time was a little bit tired. We were kind of tired musically. I’m not talking about the human side, but musically. We spent a long time doing the music together, and I have great memories with the Cuban Quartet, but it actually was the right time to quit, to say, “Okay, let’s finish and see if we can do something else different” – each one. There was the moment where Julio Barretto, the drummer, decided to live in Switzerland, and begin his career as a soloist. The bass player went to Paris and the trumpet player is still in Cuba. I moved to the United States.

Right now, I was looking around at what I did in the past, and I found out that the music at that time still presents a lot of places and spaces to recompose, to reinterpret, to take into consideration as a new point, to develop a new music and a new group as the music is still alive – at least for me.

TP:   In the intervening time from 1996 to the present, you’ve done many things. You’ve elaborated your own personal study of the piano trio, refined your touch and use of space and so on. You’ve done two bolero projects with Charlie Haden, and the broader audience can see your lyric side. And you’ve also done some very cutting-edge work, such as on Antigua. So a lot of experience is going into this current reexamination of your older work.

GONZALO:   It’s a good point about the boleros with Charlie Haden. It’s not only that I could show people my lyrical side. It’s the lyric side of the Cuban music more than my lyric side. It’s the lyric side of the Latin American music, the music of Mexico, music from Cuba, from South America. It’s the side that is not really popular in the world about Latin music. When people think about Cuban music, automatically they think about music to dance, happy music or whatever. Light music. But there are very important composers in Cuba who made a wonderful career making ballads, boleros, songs with incredibly rich harmonies and melodies. Charlie was looking for a different kind of recording, a different kind of music, not with American standards or American ballads. He was looking for something else, totally different. I sent him a CD with a lot of stuff like that, boleros, and he fell in love with it. We decided to do that first recording, Nocturne [Verve]. The second one, which is now the second part, is I’d say an extension with the music from Mexico, in that 90% was music from Mexico. Probably that was the moment when people found out that I could play another musical idiom, musical language, not only what the people used to hear me do on Antigua, on the trumpet stuff, or fire…

TP:   Or long extemporaneous improvisations with the trio.

GONZALO:   Yeah. But I think everything helped. Everything helped me to arrive at this point where I am right now. The New Cuban Quartet gives me the opportunity to put all the experience together. A lot of ballads, which I think is the most important. We have a space to improvise with total freedom and at the same time to develop forms and structures, not the typical structure that we can see in the Cuban standard music or even the American standard music. At the same time, we keep codes coming from  our folklore,  from our tradition, and also the tradition of the fusion that we’ve seen not only in the last 20 or 30 years, but from the end of the 19th century. Composers like Cervantes, Amadeo Roldan, Leo Brouwer, Caturla, Ernesto Leuconia, Aaron Copland, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, all of them were involved in this fusion to combine the music from Cuba, the music from… Not the music, but some codes, signs, from the music that we were doing in Cuba at that time with the American tradition. So this is basically what we are doing right now.

I see the record as a single piece with different movements, different chapters, all  connected in some way. The difficult thing and the beautiful thing about that is to find a different personality for each tune, a different character. It’s a challenge not only to play the music, but to compose the music. That was the point when I was looking back at the music we did on Antigua specifically. That was the motivation. That was the impulse that I found to say, “Okay, I should go again to the Cuban Quartet, new people, but trying to extend what I was doing at that time.” I think the good thing right now is that I’m a little older and I have a little bit more knowledge. I am more conscious about what I want.

TP:   A few words about the members of the New Cuban Quartet. You’re in your early forties, Ignacio Berroa is in his early fifties at this point, and the other two seem to be early thirties, if that.

GONZALO:   No, they are less. Armando [Gola] is 24 or 25, and [Felipe] Lamoglia I think is already 30.

TP:   Tell me about them.

GONZALO:   All of them are Cuban. Lamoglia was living in Brazil for a while, so he had an opportunity to share musical experience with important people there – Hermeto Pascoal and all of them. Armando was living in Columbia for three or four years, and then he moved to the United States, and is moving between Miami and New York. A lot of people know about Ignacio, who has been for 25 years already living in the U.S., making collaborations with a lot of different great musicians and different projects – McCoy Tyner, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Danilo Perez, Michel Camilo. He’s been working as part of my projects for the last 7 or 8 years.

TP:   He’s the type of drummer who, if you closed your eyes, you’d think of somebody in a muscle shirt, sweating profusely, and when you look at him, it looks as though he’s barely moving a muscle, he hardly sweats, and all these rhythms are coming out of him. In your music, who is setting up the rhythms? Are the rhythms coming from your pen? Are you collaboratng with him in terms his execution? You yourself have played quite a bit of drums and worked in your share of dance bands in Cuba. How do you set them up?

GONZALO:   It is everything together. I used to write everything, and I used to suggest what I want here and there, at that moment. Probably there’s a lot of drummers who hate me because of that. This is music that needs to be rehearsed. When we have rehearsal time, I always spend much time, 5-6 hours, to present the conception to the ensemble, but also second, trying to find the spaces, the moment where they have to add their experience. I want to see both things clearly—my vision of the music that I wrote and their vision, so that  have a space to create, to add whatever they want, always in connection with the musical conception for each chair.

TP:   This would differ in concept, I’d think, from your recent trio projects.

GONZALO:  That’s true.

TP:   Why are the two different? Is the one your compositional voice and the other your improvisational voice? Or do they blend in various ways?

GONZALO:   Well, the point is that we find here two…I don’t know if I should say two sides, but it is the same person. The difference here is that when we play trio, 80% of the music that we play is not my music. It is music from American composers, Cuban composers, whatever. And it’s music I try to interpret, or at least to develop. In this case, it’s my music in every aspect – the form, the rhythm, the idiom, everything. It’s not music that can be treated with a rigid attitude. Right now the good thing is that they feel total freedom to play this music. But it takes time. Because it is not music where you play the melody and then you improvise. No. The introduction has an instrument, and then the melody is not only the melody, but it’s the melody with another section which is the development of the melody, and there’s a second part where we are going to somewhere as a result of the first part, and then we come back and there is an improvisation section to conclude the piece. It is a trip to find an end in connection with the whole piece…

I mean, it is a complex way to make music, but it is a rich way to make music, too. What I want is not to present a little melody and a little piece of music where the people finally make improvisations, and that’s it. This is more in the classical conception to the music. That is a music that contains all our traditions, all our experience as a people, with the jazz language; all our training as classical musicians. Because we have to say that, as a Cuban, the musical education in Cuba is 100% classical, so there’s not a jazz school there or a salsa school or whatever. You go to a musical school and what you receive is a classical training. When you finish the school, you can do whatever you want. You can go in any direction you want. But the academics is totally classical.

TP:   So as a kid, you were  also playing outside of school, and playing folkloric music and dance music.

GONZALO:   Yes. But it was a trouble.

TP:   You had trouble for that.

GONZALO:   Oh, definitely. Because at that time, the classical school didn’t want you to play anything else but classical music. If they discovered that you were involved in Afro-Cuban folklore or music to dance or whatever, they looked at you very bad. They figured you were not serious. And they were totally wrong, because this is a country where the Afro-Cuban music, the popular music is really strong. It’s what made Cuba what it is. At the same time, it was good to have both sides, because we are able now to play all this tradition and a very serious classical form or structure. It’s like you said at the beginning that there’s a lot of reference that was coming from Los Van Van, from Irakere, from many other very popular orchestras in Cuba that used to make music to dance. But the way that we built this tradition is not to dance; it’s to listen. So that’s the difference. And we are able to do that because we already get the tools to create that kind of form, that kind of space, to put all these traditions together, but in a different conception, a different direction.

TP:   That’s a tremendous challenge.

GONZALO:   It is.

TP:   It’s compressing a lot of information. So I suppose some of the challenge is to avoid having it be overly dense.

GONZALO:   But I have to say something. This is not a musical language which says that we are the first ones.  Fortunately, a lot of people at the beginning of the 20th century (I already mentioned a few names, like Alejandro Garcia Caturla, Amadeo Roldan, Leo Brouwer, among others) already were doing that, more with the symphony orchestra and more with chamber music – but it was exactly the same conception. They absorbed all the music that we used to see in the religious community, the spiritual music, the Afro-Cuban codes, and they put all that information in the service of the symphonic music. Unfortunately, not many people know about this moment of the Cuban music.

TP:   Since you entered the international playing field  in 1989-90, and your first records came out with Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Jack DeJohnette, and so on… Some Cubans had come here before you, like Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Ignacio Berroa. Many have come subsequently, and are making an impact on the international jazz scene—not just from Cuba, but from around the Caribbean and South America. Their presence has changed the sound of what jazz is. By that I mean, a 7/4, a 9/4, an 11/4 time signature is not exotic; it’s part of what young musicians presume they have to play. How do you observe the changes in the scene since you emerged?

GONZALO:   Well, the good thing about Cuban music and jazz music is that both musics are open all the time to accept anything that could make them rich. That’s the reason why we have seen these great collaborations between North Americans and people from Latin America. There’s no need to force anything.  It is about attitude. The attitude of the jazz conception of doing music and the Cuban conception of doing music. There’s a totally open mind. You find freedom all the time in the form, in the harmonies, in the rhythm. We cannot say which part has been more influenced by it, the American part or the Cuban part. That’s not the point. The point is that we are arriving to something new, to something totally fresh, to something that we can see a real organization of the harmonic changes, a real organization of the structures to the music, a real organization of the musical textures, a new attitude in the American musicians to absorb, to learn what we are offering. Same with us.

TP:   For you, what were the biggest challenges in absorbing jazz syntax? You do have a trio where you’re dealing with the Songbook, with the music of Dizzy Gillespie. Were there serious challenges, things you had to work on?

GONZALO:   There were, but the biggest challenge was to find your own voice. There are too many examples of great voices, of great documents in the history of this music, and it’s really hard, after you absorb it all, after you  listen to a lot of music, after you think that you learned about this document, to find your own way, your own voice. A voice in a way that the people can recognize you. That’s the big challenge, and I think this is a big challenge not just for me – for everyone.

TP:   To deal with Afro-Cuban music properly, American musicians have to learn the codes.

GONZALO:   Yes. That’s true.

TP:   There’s a lot to learn. You can’t just go in and blow on it.

GONZALO:   Mmm-hmm.  I know what you’re talking about, and this is very delicate. In the past, I feel many American musicians were looking at Cuban music in a  superficial way—only the face, the exterior part, but not INTO the deep part of the Cuban music. The reason why I decided to push a lot to do recordings like Nocturne  or Land of the Sun with Charlie, or an album that I did a long time ago, Mi Gran Pasion, which is a danzon album, or Antigua, which contains a lot of the depth of the history of Afro-Cuban music and all the complexity of that culture, is to motivate the people here, and not only here but around the world, about all the sides of our music, our history. That’s the difference, the attitude in relation to each culture.

But I think we are at the point now where the American musicians and people around the world are more conscious about these points we are discussing right now. They know that the Salsa is there. They know that the music from Cuba and from Latin America to dance is there. But they start to accept that we can make music to make the people think, too.

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The Pile (#3) — Faith, by Gonzalo Rubalcaba, who turns 48 today (Part 1)

Saw that master pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba turns 48 today, and listened to his 2010 self-produced solo CD,  Faith, which arrived recently.  I think it’s a masterwork, as was his 2006 recital, Solo [Blue Note], on which he similarly assumed sole responsibility for time, tempo, key, timbre and tuning on a lyric meditation on the classical and folkloric canons of Cuba and the points at which they intersect with jazz.

“Not many people know the 20th century Cuban composers,” Rubalcaba told me for a Downbeat piece I wrote at the time.  “European culture had a strong presence in Cuba in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and these composers—Amadeo Roldan and Alejandro Garcia Cartula, for example—used tools from the European school to tell their own stories, their own roots and traditions, on the level that we know as classical music.”

As an example, Rubalcaba analyzed Roldan’s “Canción de Cuna del Niño Negro (Lullaby For a Black Child),” which appears on Solo. “The melody is not exactly a folk melody, but Roldan’s vision of how a folk melody sounds, and he placed it in a form that mirrors Europe,” he said. “There is the ambiance of the Impressionist composers. But the score shows us that the left hand, the ostinato, does not work as a French or Russian composer would do it. It’s against the beat, as in popular Cuban music—as we dance, as we accent and phrase our speech. My challenge was to combine the worlds of interpretation—my vision of that music—and improvisation.”

Solo feels highly curated. Faith — which includes one Caturla piece [“Preludio Corto #2 (Tu amor era Falso)”], as well as six Rubalcaba originals, two improvisations based on Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and two interpretations apiece of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma” and Bill Evans’ “Blue In Green” — does not. That the session took four days to record contradicts the aural impression that Rubalcaba turned the studio into a faux living room in which he just sat down and let the invention flow.  On both dates, he gets to essences, finding the most lyrical pathways, playing with restraint and keenly focused intention. The word “poet” gets tossed around a little too much in reference to pianists of a lyric bent, but it’s a descriptor entirely suited to Rubalcaba.

It’s a real evolution from the pre-40 phase of his career, when Rubalcaba wore his chops on his sleeve. He was  an innovator of Cuban timba (he was also the musical director for the salsero Isaac Delgado), and, while still in Cuba tried to synthesize Cuban and jazz vocabularies within a highly caffeinated, improv-oriented ensemble context. He emigrated to the Dominican Republic in 1992, then to Miami in 1996 (he became a U.S. citizen several years ago). By ’96, he was an internationally known jazz musician, known for various bravura soloist-over-all-star-rhythm section albums with the likes of bassists Charlie Haden, Ron Carter, and John Patitucci and drummers Jack DeJohnette and Paul Motian.

“At the beginning, I was a bit rushed, and pushed by the record company,” Rubalcaba remarked to me. “I was still in the process of feeling comfortable and safe. It took time to be part of the musical reality of the States, and meanwhile I was supposed to do something. “

As is evident on the subsequent Blue Note trio disks Inner Voyage [1998] and Super Nova [2002], both propelled by Cuban master  drummer Ignacio Berroa (and on a highly creative late ’90s duo recording with Joe Lovano),  Rubalcaba worked hard to assimilate the nuances of jazz syntax into his presentation. He learned, as  Ron Carter put it in 2006, “not to feel so responsible for all the ideas—all the good nights and bad nights—and to let the chips fall where they may. He understands some things are out of his control, which frees him to be even more creative.”

Rubalcaba stated in 2006 that his ability to coalesce different styles and languages “is very typical in Latin-American musicians. They move around the world, assimilating everything possible to make them powerful artists. And the way they think they are powerful is working in different areas. For example, a lot of writers work in musicology, in novels, in social studies. In music, we see the same. It’s not just Cubans. Astor Piazzolla left Argentina looking to develop his career. He established himself in Paris, and when he returned to Argentina he was criticized because nobody understood exactly what he was doing with the tango. But the tango we hear today is 100% Piazzolla.”

This predisposition for polylingualism extends to the spoken word as well; Rubalcaba has become quite comfortable expressing himself in English, as was apparent on a pair of interviews that I conducted with him on WKCR in 2004 (during a run at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola with the New Cuban Quartet) and in 2006 (during a combined solo and trio — bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Jeff Watts — week at the Jazz Standard).  I’ll post them separately, seriatem.

Blindfold Test: Paul Motian About Ten Years Ago

It’s been a thrill to get to know Paul Motian — who ends his MJQ Tribute week at the Village Vanguard tonight —  a little bit over the last 12-13 years.  He joined me on numerous occasions while I was at WKCR, and I’ve written three pieces about him — a long DownBeat feature in 2001,  a verbatim WKCR interview on  the now-defunct jazz.com website, and the blindfold test that I’ll paste below. We did this in the Carmine Street apartment of a friend of Paul’s (I could kill myself for not remembering his name right now, as he’s a nice, extremely knowledgeable guy and facilitated the encounter). This is the raw, unexpurgated pre-edit copy.

* * * * *

Paul Motian Blindfold Test:

1.    Keith Jarrett-Peacock-deJohnette, “Hallucinations”,  Whisper Not, (ECM, 2000) – (5 stars)

I’m familiar with all the players.  I don’t know who it is.  It’s not Bud Powell, obviously. …For a minute, I thought it was Keith Jarrett. [JARRETT GRUNTS] Okay, it’s Keith.  I know who the drummer is, but I can’t… I could guess and say it’s Keith’s current trio, with Jack DeJohnette and Peacock.  Five stars.  They sounded nice, man.  Good players.  Taking care of business.  I haven’t heard Keith play in that style since I don’t know when.  So for a minute I was thinking that maybe it’s a really early Keith Jarrett record from when he was going to Berklee in Boston or something.  I did think that.  I met him when he was playing… Tony Scott called me up.  He said, “Hey, man, I’ve got a gig for you at the Dom,” which was on 8th Street.  I went down there with him and Keith was playing piano.  That’s when I met him.  I said, “Wow, the piano player is great.  Who’s that?”  He said, “Keith Jarrett.  I just discovered him.” [LAUGHS] Henry Grimes was playing bass.  And I played with him that night.  That’s when I met him.  But I thought that might be early because… Well, it took me a minute to recognize DeJohnette. [What didn’t you recognize?] Sort of his style of playing and not the sound.  From what I heard from the sound, I didn’t know who it was.  It sounded familiar, but I didn’t know who it was. [Maybe he wasn’t playing his drums.] Could have been.  I’m pretty much going to give five stars to everybody.  I think everybody sounds great.  Why not? [But if you don’t think something sounds great, it would devalue the stuff to which you give five stars.] Okay, that’s all right.  If I don’t give something 5 stars, does that mean I have go and buy the record?

2.    Paul Bley, “Ida Lupino”, Plays Carla Bley (Steeplechase, 1991) [Bley, piano; Marc Johnson, bass; Jeff Williams, drums] – (5 stars)

[AFTER A FEW NOTES OF IMPROV]  That’s Paul Bley.  I wish I knew who the bass player was.  That’s “Ida Lupino.”  Paul Bley, five stars, man.  Why not?  He sounds great.  I don’t think it’s me on drums, but it could be!  I don’t know if I can get the bassist.  Charlie Haden and I played with Paul Bley in  Montreal.  I’m wondering if this is that!  Those ain’t my cymbals. [You played with the bass player.] [AFTER] Wow.  Man, I left Bill Evans to play with Paul Bley.  And when he heard about that, he was very happy.  At that time, there was a lot happening.  I’m talking about 1964.  There was a lot going on in New York.  The music was changing, there was some interesting stuff, and things were heading out into the future.  And I felt like I was stuck with Bill and that it wasn’t happening with Bill out in California.  So I just quit.  I left the poor guy out there.  What a drag I was.  I left the guy on the road like that.  My friend, my closest friend and companion and musician. [But you had to go.] Yeah, I wasn’t happy.  I came back and got into stuff with Paul Bley. [Can you  say what it is about Paul Bley that makes you recognize him quickly?  Is it his touch?]  Well, it’s everything.  It’s the sound.  Mostly sound, I guess.  Style, touch, everything.  [So you knew it was Jack DeJohnette because of his style, but with Paul here you knew…] No, I was more sure about it being Paul than I was sure about it being Jack.

3.    Scott Colley, “Segment”, …subliminal (Criss-Cross 1997) [Colley, bass; Bill Stewart, drums; Chris Potter, tenor sax; Bill Carrothers, piano) –  (5 stars)

[ON DRUM SOLO] Nice drums, whoever it is.  I like it.  I like it a lot.  It’s 5 stars.  But I don’t know who it is. [You have no idea who the tenor player is?] No.  The first two or three notes I said, “Gee, maybe it’s Joe Lovano, but it’s not.  I feel like I should know who they all are.  But I don’t. [LAUGHS] I like the tune.  What’s that tune called? [“Segment.”] Oh.  I think I played that tune. [LAUGHS] [Yes, with Geri Allen and Charlie Haden.] No wonder.  Wow.  Nice. Nice sound, the drums and everything. [AFTER] Potter?  No kidding.  That sounded really good.  Very together.  Nice sound.  I liked the sound on the drums, the way they’re tuned.  I liked it.

4.    Joey Baron, “Slow Charleston”, We’ll Soon Find Out (Intuition, 1999) [Baron, drums, composer; Arthur Blythe, alto sax; Bill Frisell, guitar; Ron Carter, bass] – (5 stars)

I have no idea who this is, but I still want to give this five stars.  They’re all playing, they’re good musicians, and it’s great! [LAUGHS]  Nice groove. [Any idea who the guitar player is?] No.  I like it, though. [AFTER] I didn’t know Frisell could do that.  He played with me for twenty years.  I didn’t know he could do that.  See, I don’t know if I would ever recognize Joey anyway.  It’s good for me to find out stuff about these guys.  I can put it to good use!  I haven’t heard Arthur Blythe much at all.

5.    Warne Marsh, “Victory Ball”, Star Highs (Criss Cross, 1982) [Marsh, tenor saxophone; Mel Lewis, drums; Hank Jones, piano; George Mraz, bass] – (5 stars)

[IMMEDIATELY] Warne Marsh.  There was one particular night at the Half Note playing with Lennie Tristano, with Warne playing… He played some shit that night that was incredible!  I’ll never forget it.  That record came out a few years ago.  Tuesday night was Lennie’s night off, and we played with no piano player or a substitute piano player, and that night it was Bill. [Any idea who the piano player is?] The way the piano player was comping, for a minute I said, “maybe it’s Lennie Tristano,” but it’s not.  Everybody sounds so good!  It’s great.  I have a feeling the piano player is going to surprise me.  Five stars.  I should know who the drummer is, but I don’t. [AFTER] Wow.  I am surprised at Hank Jones.  He usually plays with more space.  It was a great experience playing with Lennie Tristano.  I had a great time.  It was a period in my life when I was playing with a lot of people, and that was a little different than what I was used to doing, and it was very enjoyable, man.  I was playing almost every night.

6.    Satoko Fujii, “Then I Met You” , Toward, “To West” (Enja, 2000) [Fujii, piano, composer; Jim Black, drums; Mark Dresser, bass] – (5 stars)

It’s worth five stars just because of all the study the bass player had to do.  There are more players playing now than when I got to New York, and at a good level.  What I’m trying to say is that the music I listened to in the ’50s and stuff came from that time, and you listened to Prez and Bird and Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday and Max and Clifford Brown and Bud Powell.  I could recognize any of that in a second.  Now there are so many players and so many good ones.  One thing that’s… I heard a few things in the piano sound that I know it’s a digital recording, which kind of bugs me.  I still hear that kind of tingy thing… I’m almost 99% sure I can tell when it’s a digital recording or whether it’s a CD, or whether it’s an analog recording from an old LP.  I mean, there’s a solo Monk record I bought when CDs first came out.  I played it once and threw it away, man.  It sounded like an electric piano.  Five stars.  One time I was playing at the Village Vanguard with Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro, and we were playing opposite Stiller and Meara.  Stiller came up to me afterwards and said, “You guys are really brave with the music you’re playing, that you would get out in front of an audience and play that music.  There’s a lot of heart in that, and you’re really brave to be doing that.  I feel that’s five stars for these guys, with what they’re doing and where they want to take the music. [AFTER] I’ve never heard of her.  I love what they’re trying to do.

7.    Ornette Coleman, “Word For Bird”,  In All Languages (Harmolodic-Verve, 1987) [Coleman, alto sax, composer; Billy Higgins, drums; Charlie Haden, bass; Don Cherry, tp.] – (5 stars)

Ornette.  Sounds like Charlie on bass.  Blackwell on drums.  Oh.  Higgins, I guess.  Well, Charlie for sure!  Couldn’t miss that.  That’s not Cherry either, is it?  It sounds like he’s playing the trumpet!  It’s not that tiny pocket trumpet sound.   It sounds like a regular trumpet.  Now that I’ve stopped and thought about it and listened, it’s Cherry, all right.  Five stars.  More if there are any.

8.    Lee Konitz, “Movin’ Around” , Very Cool (Verve 1957) [Shadow Wilson, drums, Konitz, as, Don Ferrara, tp, composer;  Sal Mosca, piano; Peter Ind, bass]  – (5 stars)

[I want you to get the drummer on this.] [LAUGHS] I recognize the beat. [SHRUGS] Lee Konitz.  It’s got to have 5 stars right there.  It’s always great when a drummer can play the cymbal and just from the feel of the beat make music out of it.   With the trumpeter, I hear something like that, I hear a specific note, and I see a person’s face that I recognize, but I don’t know who it is! [LAUGHS] That means that I know who it is…but I don’t. [LAUGHS] The style is recognizable.  It’s beautiful.  I KNOW that drummer.  Can I guess?  how about the piano player being Sal Mosca?   Oh, Jesus.  Is the drummer Nick Stabulas, by any chance? [AFTER] Wow!  I hung out with Shadow, but… [LAUGHS] No wonder there was so much music in just playing the cymbal!  You dig? [LAUGHS] That’s great.  That means the trumpet player might be Tony Fruscella, someone like that.  Someone like Don…what was his name… [It’s Don Ferrara.] Yeah, so there you go.  I don’t think I ever played with Don Ferrara.  Is the bass player Peter Ind?  So it’s an older record.  Shadow was one of my favorite drummers, and to hear him play now after so many years and to see all the music that he played, just playing a cymbal!  Shadow was a motherfucker.  20 stars.  Shadow Wilson.  Shit.  That’s Shadow Wilson on that Count Basie record, “Queer Street,” where he plays that 4-bar introduction.

9.    Billy Hart, “Mindreader”, Oceans of Time (Arabesque, 1996) – (5 stars) [Hart, drums; Santi DeBriano, bass, composer; Chris Potter, tenor saxophone; John Stubblefield, tenor saxophone; Mark Feldman, violin; David Fiuczynski, guitar; Dave Kikoski, piano]

The piano and drums sound like they’re in tune with each other.  I’ll try to take a guess and say that bass player is Mraz. [It’s the drummer’s record.] Yeah, I figured that out.  I didn’t say anything, but… He’s the one who’s out front.  Whoever did the composition and arrangement, it’s great.  It reminds me of back in the ’60s when we were doing stuff with Jazz Composers Orchestra.  This sounds like it could be something that came out of that.  But this is more complicated somehow, more written stuff.  There’s a lot of people involved, and it’s very good.  So who’s the drummer?  Nice drum sound.  Nice tunings.  Very melodic.  Nice ideas.  He deserves some credit, man, a big organization like that.  There are a lot of good drummers out there now.  I don’t know who it is. [This drummer is close to your generation.] He sounds like he’s been around the block a few times! [LAUGHS] [AFTER] I would never recognize any of that.  The vibe is great.  The record is great.  Good for Billy.  Five stars for sure.  Look at all the work that went into that.  That was great.

10.    Danilo Perez, “Panama Libre”, Motherland (Verve 2000) [Perez, piano; Brian Blade, drums, Kurt Rosenwinkel, guitar; John Patitucci, bass] – (5 stars)

If the drummer isn’t Max Roach, Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Philly Joe, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, I’m not going to know them.  Five stars just because of the way they’re fucking with the time.  It’s not Pat Metheny, is it?  He sounds familiar, too! [Well, there’s 2 degrees of separation of everybody in jazz with you.] I like people who play with dynamics.  You don’t hear it very much!  Another reason for five stars.  I think I’ve played with this guitar player too.  Are you sure I hired them?  Another thing about drums… I don’t know who the drummer is, but on recordings, did you notice how Billy Hart was so much in front, and now this guy is mixed so far back?  I guess I’m not going to get this either.  It sounds so familiar, man! [AFTER] Kurt Rosenwinkel keeps improving.  He started with me ten years ago, and now he’s out there on his own, he’s got his own band and everything.  He’s writing nice stuff and playing better.  I recorded with Danilo Perez way back, but I wouldn’t recognize him.  But that’s why the guitar player sounded so familiar.  I should have known that sound.  I said that sound was so familiar!

11.    Joe Lovano-Gonzalo Rubalcaba, “Ugly Beauty”, Flying Colors (Blue Note, 1997) –  (5 stars) [Lovano, tenor saxophone; Rubalcaba, piano; Monk, composer]

Someone said that this was the only waltz that Monk ever wrote.  Okay, let’s figure out who this is.  Okay, Lovano. [But you’ve also played and recorded with the pianist.] Oh, Gonzalo.  I recognized Lovano.  But when I was in England recently on tour with an English band, and I walked into the club to set up, and they were playing a CD, and I heard the saxophone and I heard it for two or three notes, and I said, “That’s Lovano.”  The engineer said, “No, it’s not.”  I said, “Oh yes, it is.”  “No, it’s not.”  “Oh, yes, it is.”  And it wasn’t.  I don’t know if I would have recognized Gonzalo except for the fact that I knew Joe had done a duo record with him.  Man, five stars.  Are you kidding?  Everything’s going to be five stars.  I can’t renege now.  Joe’s great, man.  So’s Gonzalo.  They sound nice together.

12.    Joanne Brackeen, “Tico, Tico”, Pink Elephant Magic (Arkadia, 1998) [Brackeen, piano; Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernandez, drums; John Patitucci, bass] – (5 stars)

“Tico, Tico” in 5/4 time.  Five-four, five stars!  No idea who the drummer is.  Maybe I should listen a little bit! [AFTER] That was interesting.  They deserve five stars for sure.  Was it Al Foster?  I’m just guessing. [Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez.] I’ve never heard of him.

13.    Ralph Peterson, “Skippy”, Fotet Plays Monk (Evidence, 1997) [Peterson, drums; Steve Wilson, soprano sax; Brian Carrott, vibes; Belden Bullock, bass] – (5 stars)

“Skippy” by Thelonious Monk.  I was going to say Steve Lacy, but no, it’s not his sound.  Five stars just for playing a Monk tune! [AFTER] I would never have known them.  The treatment was okay.  It seemed like they just went straight-ahead and played the tune.  That’s a hard tune, man.  Even anybody to attempt that tune deserves five stars, for Chrissake.  Steve Lacy says all you have to do is know how to play “Tea For Two” and you can play “Skippy,” but I don’t believe him.  I said, “Man, ‘Skippy,’ that’s a hard tune.”  He said, ‘Well, it’s ‘Tea for Two.'”  I tried to sing “Tea For Two” along with it, but… [LAUGHS]

14.    Bud Powell-Oscar Pettiford-Kenny Clarke, “Salt Peanuts”, The Complete Essen Jazz Festival Concert (Black Lion, 1960) [start with 3:46 left] – (5 stars)

That’s “Salt Peanuts” and it was a nice drum solo, but I don’t know who the players are. [You played with one of them.] You keep saying that!  I guess it wasn’t the drummer.  It probably was the bass player.  I don’t know the piano player.  I guess because of the live recording, the sound wasn’t as great as it could have been. [Play “Blues In The Closet.”] This is the same piano player?  Almost sounds like Oscar Pettiford.  I played with him in 1957 at Small’s Paradise for a couple of weeks.  I went down south with him with his big band to Florida and Virginia.  1957, man!  Wow, that was something else.  Mostly black cats; Dick Katz was playing piano and Dave Amram was in the band.  Jesus, maybe it is Bud Powell.  Is it?  So it’s a later Bud Powell.  The drummer is Kenny Clarke.  That’s the same people as on “Salt Peanuts”?  That’s not really Kenny Clarke’s drum sound. [Maybe it wasn’t his drums] It didn’t sound like it.  It sounded kind of dead.  Max Roach got a lot from Kenny Clarke.  All those cats got shit from Sid Catlett, too.  He was a motherfucker, Sid Catlett.  Five stars.  Oscar Pettiford, man!  After I was playing with Oscar, he split and went to Europe and was playing there, and I got a telegram from his wife saying “Oscar sent me a telegram and said I should call you and get in touch with you, and you should go right away to Baden-Baden, Germany, and play with Oscar.”  I was playing with Lennie Tristano at the Half Note.  I couldn’t get up and leave.  There was no plane ticket!  But he liked me.  I was quite honored.  People said, “You played with OP?  Man, he’s death on drummers.  How are you doing that?”  I had at the time 7A drumsticks.  After one set one time, Oscar came over and looked at my drumstick and started bending it.  He said, “Man, what the fuck kind of stick is that?  Go get you some sticks!”

I think it’s great that there’s really quite a few good young players on the scene now.  It’s quite encouraging.  I think it’s good for jazz.  There may be a lot of them around.  It’s great.