Media Release
For immediate
release
December 14, 2005
Legendary Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes highlights
2006 Jazz at Banff
One of the kings of the late-20th century Cuban music boom, a dynamic and original musician and performer, composer, and bandleader, Chucho Valdes will join Canadian master trombonist and conductor Hugh Fraser for three days in May at The Banff Centre. Valdes will be mentoring young jazz musicians as part of the annual Jazz Orchestra Workshop, and will headline a Jazz at Banff concert in the Centre’s Eric Harvie Theatre on May 20.
Headed by Fraser and attracting emerging and mid-career musicians from around the world, the Jazz Orchestra Workshop is an intensive 10-day series of master classes, concerts, and informal performance opportunities. Musicians work closely with visiting artists — in the past they’ve included virtuoso trumpet player Kenny Wheeler and legendary vanguard composer Muhal Richard Abrams. With Valdes as visiting artist, the workshop in 2006 will have a distinctly Latin vibe, with a fusion of both jazz and latin-influenced instrumentalists encouraged to apply to the program.
The Centre’s Jazz Orchestra Workshop complements the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, headed by premier jazz trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas, which runs for three weeks in May and June. Attracting musicians among the best in improvisational jazz, and a host of top-draw visiting artists, the two sessions combine to make up the month-long Jazz at Banff series of formal and informal public concerts.
Chucho Valdes is the son of legendary Cuban bandleader Bebo Valdes, and founder of the Afro-Cuban Jazz band Irakere, which became the vanguard for Latin fusion in the 1970s (and which spawned the likes of Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval). With his mastery of technique and lightning-fast speed, he synthesizes deep elements of classical music, Afro-Cuban folklore, popular music and jazz. Known for his improvisatory skill, Valdes’s live recordings are especially impressive, and he has taken Cuba’s music to the rest of the world while remaining a mentor to young musicians back home.
Revered as Cuba’s greatest jazz pianist, Valdes is a five-time Grammy award-winner, honoured for Irakere’s 1978 disc Live at Newport, for the 1998 CD Havana, and for his 2003 album Live at the Village Vanguard.
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More information on The Banff Centre’s jazz programs.
Media Contact
Jill Sawyer
Media and Communications Officer, The Banff Centre
403.762.6475
