Pepe Rivero & Ángela Cervantes Present: Olas y Arenas

A delicate and elegant project, led by the Cuban pianist and composer, Pepe Rivero and the Ibizan singer Ángela Cervantes, with which they commemorate the legacy of the renowned Puerto Rican artist, Sylvia Rexach. She was a singer, composer, comedy scriptwriter and poet, to whom they pay tribute by presenting in a new way and with a new voice her sensitive work as well as her intense but short life through a selection of her songs. Rexach’s music evokes times that straddled the First World War and the bohemian nights of the 50s, in a world that did not see the full value of her art until after her passing.

A woman and artist ahead of her time, who passed away at the young age of 39, Sylvia Rexach received the full recognition that her work deserved, after her death. In 2001, she was posthumously inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame and in 2014, the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico included her in the group of illustrious women presented at the “Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña” in San Juan. Her compositions have been recorded by internationally renowned artists, such as Marco Antonio Muñiz, Lucho Gatica, and Linda Rondstat.

Olas y Arenas was conceived by José E. Cruz, from Jazz/Latino, inc., an organization based in Albany, New York, whose goal is to re-present and celebrate eleven of Rexach’s musical pearls through the arrangements and direction of the Cuban pianist Pepe Rivero and his Latin / jazz trio. The Ibizan singer, Ángela Cervantes, gives a new voice to the melodies and poems of the Puerto Rican composer. The project also features saxophonists Miguel Zenón and Ariel Bringuez.

Pepe Rivero: “The existence and work of this Puerto Rican artist is highly deserving of as many tributes as anyone can imagine, so that the world will remember and never forget her name.”

Ángela Cervantes: “It overwhelms me to think that I discovered Sylvia Rexach at the same age with which she left this dimension, to get closer to the stars. The songs we have selected for this new album are now skin-deep in me and they are there to stay.”

José E. Cruz: “What Sylvia Rexach offers is a life told through universal musical poetry, elegant, simple, sensitive, transparent, deeply expressive and full of truth, and that is why it is necessary to disseminate her work as broadly as possible.”

Pepe Rivero – piano/arrangements
Ángela Cervantes – vocals
Ariel Bringuez – tenor & soprano saxs (tracks 8, 9)
Miguel Zenón – alto sax (track 10)
Reinier Elizarde “El Negrón” – bass
Michael Olivera – drums

*Source: Jazz/Latino inc.