Sunday April 27th, 2025
VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE
600 Hamilton St.
THE CONCERT
CUBA'S MUSIC PRODIGY
Singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, arranger, orchestra director, and Grammy winner —it’s hard to talk about Cuban-born music genius Alain Pérez without resorting to superlatives. He has worked alongside iconic figures such as Paco de Lucía, Chucho Valdés & Irakere, Celia Cruz, Enrique Morente, Diego El Cigala, and many others. Alain Pérez was instrumental in revolutionizing contemporary Cuban music during the 90's, a decade that changed the country's music forever, and a period where he cemented his place as one of Cuba's most gifted musicians. Today, the very mention of his name prompts a reverence and a smile of joy, because that's what Alain Pérez has come to symbolize: the embodiment of the island’s rich and uplifting music.
MAESTROS OF AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ is a concert series dedicated to showcase in Vancouver some of the greatest exponents of the genre. In choosing Alain Perez as our flag artist, we want to make a statement of how serious we are about bringing top talent to our city, confident that the performance you'll attend will leave an indelible memory in your senses.
AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
During its first decades, the Afro-Cuban jazz movement was stronger in the United States than in Cuba. In the early 1970s, Kenny Dorham and his Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, and later Irakere, brought Afro-Cuban jazz into the Cuban music scene, influencing styles such as songo. Irakere (faux-Yoruba for 'forest') was founded in 1973 by pianist Chucho Valdés (son of Bebo Valdés). Irakere were innovative in both Afro-Cuban jazz and Cuban popular dance music. The group used a wide array of percussion instruments such as bata, abakuá and arará drums, chequeres, erikundis, maracas, keys, cencerros, bongos, drums (congas), and guiro. [Source: Wikipedia]
Many of Cuba's most talented jazz musicians have at some point been part of Irakere, amongst them: Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D'Rivera, Jorge Varona, Carlos Emilio Morales and Alain Pérez, to name a few.