Media Release Backgrounder

Additional information pertaining to
2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival turns a spotlight on innovative new work and rediscovered favourites

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For immediate release
April 27, 2006

Jazz Orchestra with Chucho Valdés

Saturday, May 20 7:30 p.m.
Eric Harvie Theatre — The Banff Centre

Spicing up The Banff Centre’s popular jazz concert series this year, Cuban pianist and bandleader Chucho Valdés will lead the Centre’s jazz orchestra on May 20. With a focus on large-scale orchestrations and a stage filled with emerging professional musicians, Valdés will join Jazz Orchestra director and renowned trombonist Hugh Fraser for one of the season’s hottest concerts. Jazz is on the bill at The Banff Centre from May 11 to June 21, with impromptu gigs in the Centre’s intimate cabaret space, The Club, and formal concerts large and small, featuring up-and-coming musicians alongside jazz greats like acclaimed trumpeter Dave Douglas, percussionist Clarence Penn, saxophonist Marcus Strickland, bassist James Genus, and guitarist Rez Abbasi. Created in 1974 by Oscar Peterson and Phil Nimmons, The Banff Centre’s program and concert series is one of the gems of the Canadian jazz scene, a hothouse of modern improvisational and orchestral composition and performance.

Chucho Valdés

Chucho Valdés is the son of legendary Cuban bandleader Bebo Valdés, 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, Valdés’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.

Hugh Fraser

In 1980, Fraser formed the Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation (VEJI), and in 1986 created the Hugh Fraser Quintet. In 1996 and 1998, he was voted Canadian Trombonist of the Year by Toronto’s Jazz Report Awards, and as leader, he has recorded over 60 of his own compositions on 13 albums. He won two Juno Awards and has many additional nominations. Hugh has performed or recorded with Jaki Byard, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland, Sheila Jordan, among many others. As a jazz educator, Hugh has served as the program head at The Banff Centre, the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, the University of Ulster Summer Jazz Workshop in Ireland, and is much sought after as a guest clinician.

Downloadable images of Chucho Valdés and jazz.