CD Reviews

Ann Reynolds has carved a very nice niche for herself in Cuba. Well aware that she was a foreigner she decided to make her...

Editor's Pick · Featured Album The González brothers are a Puerto Rican dynasty, much like the Jones brothers of Pontiac, Michigan. While trumpeter and conguero...

There is topographical significance in the musical architecture of Carlos Henriquez’s record, The Bronx Pyramid and it is a bold thesis, one that has...

The term “legend” is best reserved for dead people: Buddy Bolden, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus; and directly from Cuba: Arsenio Rodríguez, Tata Güines, Frank...

Pasion Por La Vida is an unusual and memorable record, even by Roger Davidson's standards. It is the third "Latin" record made by Davidson, a pianist influenced by Bill Evans as much as by Chopin. But Pasion Por La Vida takes Davidson's love for the music of South America a shade further than - Mango Tango, Amor Por El Tango and Rogers in Rio [...]

Experimenting with the melding together of idiomatic musical languages can be touch-and-go. Strong musical “linguistic” characteristics can often ...

Luis Marín plays with the quiet assurance that shows him to be a musician of considerable promise. Mr. Marín is a pianist of immense potential. He combines the rhythmic muscularity of his left hand...

What happens when you have a number of sublimely talented musicians rubbing shoulders together on a disc? If the programme is satisfying chances are the disc can be rather good...

As if shepherding her brilliant vocals through a Brasilian soundscape were not enough, Catina DeLuna has turned the charms of her voice of longing...

The connotation of the music of Chucho Valdés being Border-Free, from soul to finger-tips, is that idiom and metaphor melt—one into the other—and that...

A violinist who tends towards relative introversion and a pianist who tends the other way. Put them together and something magical happens within the...

There is a certain fire that burns with a quietude that, although atypical of the Latin soul, still contains much of the passion that is contained in it. In fact the passion is so contained that the fire actually soars with its very chill. The music of Laura Fernandez “burns” with this cold fire. Much of Miles Davis’ music was “hot” in that sense (that) it burned with a similar quiet fire. Conventional wisdom dictates that Latin music is not meant to be cool but fiery and hot [...]

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...

The act of singing may be described as producing musical sounds with the voice to augment regular speech, by the use of both tonality and rhythm. This would suggest that anyone who could speak can also sing, which might ...

The first thing that becomes obvious about Alex Díaz’s beguilingly titled album, Number Seven is that its music is extremely forthright. A number of...

The Battle has begun, the Battle of… Titans! The Grammy Award winner Doug Beavers brings us his exquisite, new album, Titanes del Trombón, a tremendous...

Ms. Cortés is a Spanish language singer but on this album she also steps out as a highly skilled singer of English language songs equal to or even perhaps even better than her performances on the Spanish...

That Miguel Zenón has been recognized as one of the most exciting young alto saxophonists to break into the scene has been known for...

Editor's Pick · Featured Album As a pianist, Alfredo Rodriguez is a rare bird, the very epitomé of the one he celebrates on Tocororo. He...

The insane revelry of the guaguancó kicks off De La Habana a Nueva York, and produces a blue flame of energy from an all,...