Albums
Past, Present and Future in the Music of Aruán Ortiz
The music of Africa – music played in Africa by African people, or those who they choose to allow into their inner circle – is not angry. It may be dolorous, if the occasion demands it, but it is mostly joyful – even funeral music turns from sadness to joy as the dead ancestors are ushered into heaven. This is not the case, however, with the music of the African Diaspora – from Europe to the Caribbean and North and South America – in response to the blight of slavery the shackles of modern economic colonialism, newforms of ghettoization arising from economic deprivation, police brutality and everything uncivilised that Western societies could dream up in the name of civilisation.
Aruán Ortiz is a black Cuban. The country of his birth has been demonised in the name of democracy by a 60+year economic blockade. And yet Mr Ortiz appears to have benefitted from an education in Cuba – especially a historic music education [in every sense of the word] that is second to none; an education which many Black US Americans have been deprived. Genius fueled by such restless creativity by definition can rarely be contained, not by geography or by musical school of thought. But with childlike zeal, it is driven by the pursuit of the proverbial Holy Grail contained in the momentary evanescence of music.
The continuum of music is, of necessity, abetted by the wonderful reality of tradition [which, in the case of Afro-Cuban music, includes the untold riches of Arab-influenced Spanish music as well]. Mr Ortiz who is expertly schooled in the Western and Afro-Cuban traditions, is ever-cognisant of the fact that the inner dynamic of tradition is to always innovate. He acknowledges this in his uniquely beautiful and defiantly provocative music, positioning himself in creative conflict with archetypal models and age-old protocols. In his compositions and his pianism there is no such thing as what “ought” to work.
By actively throwing overboard melodic, structural, and harmonic hooks that have been become expressively blunted from overuse, he builds from what might – or might not – be left. This instinctive radicalism might make Mr Ortiz a source of endless controversy in many corners of the musical world. But Mr Ortiz is not in the business of audience-ingratiating beauty typical of commercial music. His aim is to silence the mind just enough to make room for new pathways of perception.
He creates music in which nothing – no subplot in the narrative; no emotion of the characters or reaction to both those aspects can be omitted, not a single turn of the melody, not even a single modulation. It requires the strictest attention to every detail of expression, a fine – but not over-refined – execution of each intonation. And so, when he plays – and exhorts his performing partners to play – you can be sure that there is a real sense that responses come from deep within the music’s substance.
Aruán Ortiz: Pastor’s Paradox The Cambridge Dictionary defines paradox as a noun [countable or uncountable] denoting “a situation or statement that seems impossible or is difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics”. It provides the following example: [+ that] “It’s a curious paradox that drinking a lot of water can often make you feel thirsty”. Such an unsatiated thirst may then be seen as a metaphor for the plentiful water of civil rights that first left Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. almost dying of thirst, so to speak.
Mr Ortiz’s edgy music dedicated to the Pastor in the narratives and word-paintings of Pastor’s Paradox is as edgy but stops short of anger. It is almost continuously strident in tone – intent on creating a feeling of discomfort in the listener’s consciousness. Yet in the force of its melodic and harmonic conception – and even in the rhythmic propulsion – it is never violent. Dr. King, after all, was a non-violent Gandhian in thought, word, and deed for the ‘dream’ that Dr. King dreamed remains unfulfilled despite the legislation that it helped facilitate more than 50 years ago.
But the lament of this music by Mr Ortiz is real in these works, melded together like a symphony of sorrowful songs. It is a cathartic vision of post-Civil Rights March, post-racial equality. The heartache of the theme and content of this music has been deeply interiorised by the performers. The clarinet and bass clarinet played with incomparable mastery by Don Byron might represent the elemental wail of mothers [like the mother of George Floyd for example]. The celli of Lester St. Louis and Yves Dhar might represent the heartache and the collective wail of those left behind to mourn for the dead. The portentous rolling thunder of the drums of Pheeroan akLaff and the ominous hiss of his cymbals seem to say: “time’s up!”
And just in case you didn’t get the message, we have the emotional, expressive recitation of thought-provoking poems by the spirit voiced Mtume Gant whose elemental wail on Autumn of Freedom, The Dream That Wasn’t Meant to be Ours and The Interval Hope stabs at the listener’s heart. Both dream and passion – and the rarefied impulse that the performers convey with penetrating insight is manifest throughout this remarkable disc.
Music – 1: Autumn of Freedom; 2: Pastor’s Paradox; 3: Turning the Other Cheek No More; 4: The Dream That Wasn’t Meant to be Ours; 5: From Montgomery to Memphis [to April 4th]; 6: The Interval of Hope; 7: No Justice, No Peace, Legacy!
Musicians – Aruán Ortiz: piano, voice and composition; Don Byron: clarinet, bass clarinet and voice; Pheeroan akLaff: drums and voice; Lester St. Louis: cello [1, 2, 4 – 6]; Yves Dhar: cello [3, 7]; Mtume Gant: spoken word [1, 4, 6].
Released – 2023
Label – Clean Feed/Trem Azul [CF648CD]
www.cleanfeed-records.com
Runtime – 39:22
Aruán Ortiz Trio: Serranías – Sketchbook for Piano Trio Once again Mr Ortiz shows how he loves to write in musical metaphors. Here he does so in creating music that scales the heights of the proverbial Serranías – mountain ranges which not only is the Kingdom of Heaven – or Valhalla to the Vikings, the world beyond to Astral Travellers and ancient pagans and the After World to many others – but among which reside his [Mr Ortiz’s] many musical ancestors. According to the repertoire on this album, to Ignacio Cervantes.
There are also numberless others encoded in his insolent technical virtuosity. Right out of the gate we are treated to a brilliantly original interpretation of Shaw ‘Nuff, a musical doffing of the hat to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. But in keeping with Mr Ortiz’s interminable traversing, back-and-forth through the musical continuum one may encounter Johann Sebastian Bach in the three-way contrapuntal conversations between Mr Ortiz and bassist Brad Jones and drummer John Betsch. And one may never tire of the evocatively reimagined echoes of the batanga of Bebo Valdés, a changüi – played montuno-style – by the ingenious composer and pianist.
The creativity in redefining tradition – both the Afro-Cuban and the Afro-American ones that have been subsumed into Mr Ortiz’s sensibility – is instantly palpable. His playing is gloriously effervescent throughout. His contemporaneous redefinition of music that includes every music and dance idiom from Cuba – from Tumba Francesa and many others that are collected in one fell sweep across the beautiful island of Cuba provide an invaluable and fascinating glimpse into Cuba’s past.
The rhythmic poetry of Mr Ortiz’s pianism is infectious and a perfect catalyst for his partners – in harmony [Mr Jones] and rhythm [Mr Betsch]. The repertoire may sound familiar to Spanish speaking listeners, but sonically the almighty surprises come fast and furious. En Forma de Guajira, even with its loitering rhythm that lead naturally from the rolling bass line melody from the staccato and rumbling left hand find a shimmering reflection in soft, rapid figurations of the right hand.
This is only one instance of radical invention of traditional music and dance by Mr Ortiz. The album is full of this as he climbs the proverbial summit of the Serranías. His creative effervescence is infectious. It inspires both the bassist and the drummer to scale the heights of the mountain even without being born into the Cuban tradition. However, this copasetic empathy gives truth to the fact that music of the African is universal among its diasporic inhabitants, irrespective of where they came from in the so-called New World. There was but one mother that begat the cultural topography and that is Mother Africa.
Music – 1: Shaw ‘Nuff [into un bombo]; 2: En forma de Guajira; 3: Memorias del monte; 4: Los tres golpe; 5: Canto de tambores y caracoles [solo]; 6: Huellas… [interlude]; 7: Serranías; 8: Black Like a Thunder Stone [one]; 9: Like a Changüi [montuno]; 10: …and Shadows [interlude II]; 11: Lullaby for the End Times.
Musicians – Aruán Ortiz: piano; Brad Jones: contrabass; John Betsch: drums.
Released – 2023
Label – Intakt [CD392/2023]
www.intakrec.ch
Runtime – 59:16
For Claudia Acuña, home has never been a fixed destination. It is something carried—in the body, in memory, in language, and in sound.
On Ave de Luz, the Chilean vocalist brings those fragments together with unusual clarity. After three decades in New York, Acuña no longer treats her roots as something to weave quietly into jazz. She places them at the center. Her striking declaration—“I’m coming in with my crown, my poncho, my everything”—captures the album’s spirit perfectly.
Raised in Concepción during Chile’s dictatorship years and later transformed by New York’s jazz scene, Acuña has spent much of her career moving between worlds. Ave de Luz feels like the moment when those worlds stop competing with one another.
A Specifically Chilean Jazz
Acuña has resisted the idea that “Latin jazz” can be reduced to a single vocabulary. Afro-Cuban and Brazilian traditions may dominate the popular understanding of the term, but Latin America contains countless rhythmic, folkloric and indigenous languages.
Her own metaphor is simple: noodles and spaghetti may look related, but they are not the same thing.
That idea shapes Ave de Luz. The album is not merely jazz with Chilean colour added to it. It is music whose identity emerges from cueca, Andean traditions, indigenous sonorities, poetry, migration and improvisation.
The trutruka, charango, zampoña, tormento and Chilean pandero become part of the album’s grammar. They interact with Manu Koch’s piano and keyboards, Carlos Henderson’s bass and Yayo Serka’s drums and percussion without sounding ornamental or exoticized.
Poetry, Memory and Resistance
“Chinga La Ka Chinga” captures one of the album’s most expansive ideas. Festive on the surface, the piece also acknowledges Afro-Chilean and northern Chilean currents, suggesting how celebration can carry history, resistance and cultural memory within its pulse.
Elsewhere, the music turns inward. “Piececitos de Niño,” inspired by Gabriela Mistral, brings poetry and childhood into the album’s emotional landscape, while “Rezo” feels almost elemental: voice, charango, atmosphere and silence shaping a meditation on nature, distance and belonging.
Acuña’s reading of Violeta Parra’s “La Jardinera” is equally significant. Its imagery of planting, tending and healing becomes an apt metaphor for tradition itself. Culture survives not by remaining untouched, but by being replanted. Acuña does precisely that.
The Wind From the South
“Viento del Sur” also carries special resonance, recalling the title of Acuña’s 2000 debut, Wind from the South. Then, the image suggested a Chilean artist arriving in the international jazz world. Here, the meaning has changed.
The south is no longer where she came from. It is something she continues to carry.
That idea finds its fullest expression in the title track. The “bird of light” becomes an image of migration without erasure—a figure moving forward while remaining connected to its place of origin. The metaphor fits Acuña herself.
Her longtime musical relationship with Koch, Henderson and Serka gives Ave de Luz much of its freedom. Years of trust let the ensemble move naturally between folk memory, jazz improvisation and contemporary textures without forcing boundaries between them.
Ave de Luz may be Claudia Acuña’s most complete artistic statement because it no longer asks her identities to compromise.
The crown is experience.
The poncho is memory.
Jazz is the road between them.
And Claudia Acuña travels that road carrying Chile fully into the light.
Album Information
- Artist: Claudia Acuña
- Album: Ave de Luz: Chilean Jazz & Soul
- Label: Delfin Records
- Release date: July 10, 2026
- Genre: Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Chilean jazz
- Format: Digital/streaming
- Final digital release: 7 tracks, approximately 36 minutes
Tracklist
- Chinga La Ka Chinga – (Claudia Acuña, Coch, Hernandez & Serka) – 4:43
- Ave de Luz– (Mario Rojas) – 5:48
- Viento del Sur– (Claudia Acuña & Jason Lindner) – 6:01
- Rezo– (Claudia Acuña) – 3:49
- Piececitos de Niño– (Based on a poem of Gabriela Mistral / Music by Claudia Acuña) – 6:10
- Un Gorro de Lana– (Víctor Acosta) – 4:18
- La Jardinera– (Violeta Parra) – 6:01
Personnel
- Claudia Acuña – vocals, percussion/claps, tormento; producer
- Manu Koch – piano and keyboards (tracks 1, 2, 3, 5)
- Carlos Henderson – bass
- Yayo Serka – drums and percussion
- Pablo Vergara – piano (tracks 6, 8)
- Andrés Pollak – piano, organ; producer (track 7) | organ (track 1)
- Pablo Zárate – accordion, Chilean pandero (track 2)
- Fredy Torralba – traditional Chilean/Andean instruments including charango, trutruka and zampoña
- Paulina García – spoken word (track 6)
- Daniel Kelley-Acuña – vocals (track 6)
Production Credits
Produced by Claudia Acuña and Andrés Pollak. Most of the sessions were recorded at East Side Sound in New York in November 2025, with “Ave de Luz” recorded at TOC Música in Santiago in October 2025 and additional recording completed at Banduria Studio in Santiago. Andrés Pollak handled engineering on the principal New York sessions; Rafael Chaparro engineered the Santiago title-track session with Javier Lizana assisting. Marc Urselli mixed and mastered the project.
With La Malinche, Eva Cortés delivers one of the most ambitious recordings of her career—a project in which history, identity, migration and music converge around one of the most contested figures in the Americas.
Malintzin, also known as Doña Marina or La Malinche, has long been portrayed through conflicting narratives: interpreter, intermediary, mother of mestizaje, victim, survivor and, in later nationalist mythology, traitor. Cortés does not try to settle that debate. Instead, she uses Malintzin as a symbol of cultural transition, displacement and survival.
That choice makes particular sense for an artist whose own life has unfolded across borders. Born in Honduras (Central America), shaped culturally in Seville (Spain) and later immersed in New York’s jazz community, Cortés has always made music from the space between traditions. On La Malinche, that in-between space becomes the heart of the album.
A Music of Crossings
The album brings together flamenco, Latin jazz, contemporary jazz and Indigenous-inspired imagery without turning the result into a forced fusion.
Rather than attempting to recreate pre-Columbian Mexican music literally, Cortés evokes Indigenous memory through percussion, communal voices, repetition and themes of ancestry, earth and maize. Flamenco enters through Spanish guitar, vocal inflection and the expressive grit associated with cante. Jazz supplies the harmonic freedom and improvisational space that allow those elements to interact.
The musicians surrounding Cortés are crucial to that balance. Pianists Pepe Rivero, Jon Cowherd and Zaccai Curtis, bassists Christian McBride, Luques Curtis and Reinier Elizarde “Negrón,” and drummers Antonio Sánchez, Adam Cruz and Georvis Pico give the album both rhythmic strength and harmonic flexibility. Roman Filiú, Paco Heredia, Marvin Sewell, Bandolero and others expand the palette further. The result is music that never feels boxed into one category.
The Voice at the Center
Cortés’ singing remains the album’s most powerful instrument. Her phrasing can be loose and conversational, then suddenly sharpen into something more urgent and flamenco-inflected. She moves between reflection, mourning, protest and defiance without sacrificing musical control.
Most importantly, she refuses to define Malintzin through betrayal. Her interpretation focuses instead on endurance and complexity.
The opening “Abuelita Malinche” immediately makes that clear. By calling her “Abuelita,” Cortés transforms Malinche from a figure of accusation into an ancestral presence. The arrangement blends Latin-jazz movement with flamenco coloration, while her wordless vocal passages move naturally between scat and cante.
“Hij@s del Maíz” extends that idea of cultural mixture. Paco Heredia’s guitar, Pepe Rivero’s piano, Antonio Sánchez’s drums and the accordion create a sound that travels across regions rather than belonging to one. Maize becomes a symbol of Indigenous continuity, while the music reflects the constantly changing character of mestizaje itself.
From History to the Present
The album becomes even more powerful when it connects the past to contemporary realities.
“Letters to Heaven” and “Remember Me” introduce themes of Indigenous loss and the disappearance of women from both historical memory and present-day communities. “Sur Global” shifts toward resistance, combining rhythmic drive with a broader reflection on colonialism, migration and inequality.
Then “Spanish Harlem” brings the journey firmly into the present. Horns, flute, tumbao and call-and-response place Cortés within New York’s Latin-jazz tradition, completing a musical path that stretches from ancestral memory to the modern city.
A Major Statement
La Malinche is more than an album built around a historical figure. It is a meditation on who controls history, who gets remembered and how identity continues to change across generations and borders.
Cortés turns her own musical hybridity into the album’s central idea. Jazz, flamenco and Latin American traditions do not simply coexist here—they help tell the story.
The result is one of her strongest and most focused recordings to date: emotionally direct, musically sophisticated and deeply rooted in the ongoing conversation between memory and transformation. La Malinche is not about recovering a pure past. It is about reclaiming the right to reinterpret it.
Album Information
- Artist: Eva Cortés
- Album: La Malinche
- Label: Truth Revolution Records / TRRcollective
- Release: June 2026
- Official press release date: June 5, 2026
- TRRcollective Bandcamp release date: June 19, 2026
- Format: CD / Digital
- Number of tracks: 11
- Total running time: 51:53
- Genre: Jazz / Latin Jazz / Flamenco / Afro-Latin
- Recorded in: Madrid, Spain, and Little Falls, New Jersey, USA
Tracklist
- Abuelita Malinche — 4:35
- A Tribo do Vento — 5:46
- Soy el Aire — 5:31
- Light and Sorrow — 3:59
- Hij@s del Maíz — 4:24
- Letters to Heaven — 5:04
- Remember Me — 3:28
- Sur Global — 5:43
- No Me Limites — 4:33
- Indians of All Tribes — 3:53
- Spanish Harlem — 4:57
Personnel
- Eva Cortés — vocals, composer, lyricist, backing vocals
- Pepe Rivero — piano, keyboards, arrangements
- Jon Cowherd — piano
- Zaccai Curtis — piano, keyboards
- Christian McBride — bass
- Luques Curtis — bass
- Reinier Elizarde “Negrón” — bass
- Paco Heredia — Spanish guitar, guitar, arrangements
- Marvin Sewell — guitar
- Roman Filiú — saxophone, flute, backing vocals
- Bobby Martínez — saxophone
- Manuel Machado — trumpet
- Antonio Serrano — harmonica
- Javier Colina — accordion
- Bandolero — percussion
- Roland Guerrero — percussion
- Antonio Sánchez — drums
- Adam Cruz — drums
- Georvis Pico — drums, vocal solo, backing vocals
Production Credits
- Produced by: Eva Cortés, Roman Filiú and Pepe Rivero
- Label: Truth Revolution Records / TRRcollective
- Session One: Camaleón Music Studio, Madrid, Spain
- Recording Engineer, Madrid: Diego Román
- Session Two: Studio Mozart, Little Falls, New Jersey, USA
- Recording Engineer, New Jersey: Kostadin Kamcev
- Mixing: David Darlington
- Mastering: David Darlington
- Mixing and Mastering Studio: Bass Hit Studios, New York, NY
- Photography: Noah Shaye
The title Abriendo Puertas—“Opening Doors”—captures the spirit of guitarist Roni Ben-Hur’s latest recording with unusual precision. Recorded in Havana with an accomplished group of Cuban musicians, the album is built not around the novelty of a visiting jazz guitarist encountering Cuban music, but around something more meaningful: musicians listening closely enough to find a common language.
Ben-Hur has spent much of his career moving naturally between musical worlds. Born in Israel to a Tunisian family and shaped professionally by New York’s jazz community, his playing draws from bebop, Brazilian music, Mediterranean traditions and Latin rhythms without sounding like a collection of influences. His years with pianist and mentor Barry Harris helped establish the melodic clarity, swing and understated sophistication that remain central to his guitar style. On Abriendo Puertas, those qualities fit remarkably well within a Cuban setting.
The key creative partner is pianist Alejandro Falcón, who contributes four of the seven compositions: the title track, “Gua’ One Blues Pal Bobby,” “Lo que es del César” and “El Teide.” Rather than treating Ben-Hur as a soloist placed in front of a Cuban rhythm section, Falcón helps create an ensemble language in which guitar and piano continuously exchange roles. Their compatibility is evident from the opening title track, where rhythmic momentum and lyrical improvisation develop patiently rather than through display.
“Gua’ One Blues Pal Bobby” pushes the conversation toward the blues while retaining a strong Cuban rhythmic identity. It is one of the album’s most spirited performances, illustrating how readily the vocabulary of jazz can coexist with the rhythmic imagination surrounding Ben-Hur in Havana. By the time the ensemble reaches “Lo que es del César” and “El Teide,” the distinction between guest and host has largely disappeared. What remains is a cohesive band responding to one another in real time.
The album’s romantic center comes through three classic Latin American songs. José Antonio Méndez’s “Mi Mejor Canción” brings the intimacy of the Cuban filin tradition into the program, while Osdalgia Lesmes appears on Isolina Carrillo’s “Dos Gardenias” and Armando Manzanero’s “Esta tarde vi llover.”
Lesmes brings warmth and emotional directness to both performances, and Ben-Hur proves once again what a sensitive accompanist he can be. His guitar surrounds the voice rather than competing with it, reflecting an approach he has developed through years of working with singers, including the late Brazilian vocalist Leny Andrade. Ben-Hur has spoken of the importance of leaving space for vocalists and allowing melody and lyric to remain at the center of an arrangement.
That same sense of space benefits the entire recording. Pedro Pablo Gutiérrez on acoustic bass, Ruy López-Nussa on drums and Octavio Rodríguez Rivera on percussion provide a foundation that is rhythmically rich without becoming overcrowded. Tenor saxophonist Emir Santa Cruz, featured on four tracks, adds another expressive voice and gives several performances a broader jazz-ensemble character.
Recorded at DBega Studios in Havana in November 2025, Abriendo Puertas is part of the Cuban Notes recording series co-produced by Ben-Hur and Dot Time Records founder Johanan “Jo” Bickhardt. Yet the album succeeds beyond the concept behind the series.
Its strength is ultimately found in the musicians themselves. Nobody appears interested in proving how effortlessly jazz and Cuban music can be combined. They simply play together until those distinctions become secondary.
For listeners who appreciate expressive jazz guitar, Cuban music and recordings where collaboration matters more than spectacle, Abriendo Puertas is easy to recommend. Warm, sophisticated and deeply conversational, it finds Roni Ben-Hur opening another musical door—and discovering an ensemble waiting on the other side.
Album Information
Artist: Roni Ben-Hur
Album: Abriendo Puertas
Label: Dot Time Records
Catalog: DT9192
Genre: Jazz / Latin Jazz
Release Date: June 26, 2026
Recorded: November 2025
Studio: DBega Studios, Havana, Cuba
Format: CD / Digital
Program: 7 tracks, approximately 49 minutes.
The project is part of Cuban Notes, co-produced by Johanan “Jo” Bickhardt and Roni Ben-Hur. It follows Alejandro Falcón’s Falcón in Blue as the second album in the series.
Tracklist
1. Abriendo Puertas – Alejandro Falcón – 8:12
2. Mi Mejor Canción – José Antonio Méndez – 6:32
3. Dos Gardenias – Isolina Carrillo – 5:23
4. Gua’ One Blues Pal Bobby – Alejandro Falcón – 9:23
5. Esta tarde vi llover – Armando Manzanero – 5:56
6. Lo que es del César – Alejandro Falcón – 6:17
7. El Teide – Alejandro Falcón – 7:49
Personnel Credits
Roni Ben-Hur — guitar
Alejandro Falcón — piano
Pedro Pablo Gutiérrez — acoustic bass
Ruy López-Nussa — drums
Octavio Rodríguez Rivera — percussion
Emir Santa Cruz — tenor saxophone, tracks 1, 4, 5 and 7
Osdalgia Lesmes — vocals, tracks 3 and 5
Production Credits
Executive Producer: Johanan “Jo” Bickhardt
Co-Producer: Roni Ben-Hur
Recorded at: DBega Studios, Havana
Recording date: November 2025
Sound Engineer: Carlos D’Bega
Label: Dot Time Records
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Leslie C Hyland
Apr 14, 2024 at 11:09 am
Truly one of the most astute, beautifully composed & written musical critiques I have ever read! Thank you for your depth of expression that illuminates the virtuosic music of Aruan Ortiz.