Tito Puente: The Best of the Concord Years
Producing a compilation of the music of someone like Tito Puente is no easy task. With scores of recordings where do you start? What...
Machito: Kenya
Far from being the obligatory “essential Latin Jazz” album, Machito’s Kenya escapes this glib epithet by the skin of its teeth. Drumming out the...
Mongo Santamaria: Our Man in Havana
This superb music from 1956 has an odd footnote at the bottom of my copy, which says “Recorded under the personal supervision of the...
Cal Tjader: Mambo with Tjader
Sixty-five years on this seminal album has been credited as the one Cal Tjader album that set the vibraphonist on a course that put...
Pérez Prado & Shorty Rogers: Voodoo Suite
Who knew that Dámaso Pérez Prado, the “Mambo King”, director of Sonora Matancera between 1936 and 1939, long before he formed his iconic mambo...
Wayne Shorter: Native Dancer
The ultimate expression of Wayne Shorter’s desire to make a “Brasilian” record is Native Dancer. However it is further from being a “Brasilian” record...
Juan Manuel Ceruto: A Puerto Padre – Tributo a Emiliano Salvador
Of the many pianists that have come out of Cuba throughout its history, the young Emiliano Salvador may be one of the most iconic...
Dizzy Gillespie y Machito: Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods
Dizzy Gillespie honored his African roots in many ways. His chameleonic writing was a testament to this fact. He also, along with Chano Pozo,...
Ritmo y Candela – Rhythm at the Crossroads
Patato, Changuito, Orestes - Ritmo y Candela
Put three mighty Cuban percussionists together at any time and the unquenchable fire of creativity is bound to...
Estrellas de Areito: Los Héroes
Although much of the world was welcoming of Cuba after the Revolution and although many artists did flee the country for a new world of freedom and...
Rubén González: Introducing Rubén González
It is one of those travesties of justice that some of Cuba’s greatest musicians were discovered or re-discovered by adoring audiences worldwide when they...
Paquito D’Rivera: Tico Tico
Nothing – and I mean nothing; no track list and probably no ensemble either – is more suitable to the emotional intimacy and urgency...
Chucho Valdés: Briyumba Palo Congo
In 1999 the maestro Chucho Valdés made one of his most significant records for the Blue Note. In seven relatively short – by the...
Jane Bunnett: Spirits of Havana
Every one of the albums that Jane Bunnett has made, with or without her husband and trumpet/flugelhorn player, Larry Cramer, with or without Don...
Hilton Ruiz: Heroes
Although the extraordinary pianist Hilton Ruiz made many superb recordings in his short career, none is more iconic than Heroes and it is not...
Kenny Dorham: Afro-Cuban
The fabled Spanish tinge has hovered on the fringes of jazz a lot longer ago that it was known to have been introduced into...
Giovanni Hidalgo: Villa Hidalgo
Giovanni Hidalgo is just fifty-two years old, but he has been a professional percussionist for a little over forty years. This is remarkable. Very few percussionists, even those in the rest of...
Horace Silver: Song for my Father
Of all the iconic recordings of the 50’s and 60’s, Horace Silver’s Song for my Father will always be remembered as one of...
Ray Barretto: Time Was – Time is
The ubiquitous and colourful conga drum often resides in a cluttered space especially in Latin Jazz, a music that it seems to have shaped...
Armando Romeu: 1er Concierto de la Orq Cubana de Música Moderna
The Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna was one of the early swing bands that rocked Cuba and it’s hardly surprising why. The big band...
