Search - Gonzalo Rubalcaba :: Supernova

Supernova
Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Supernova
Genres: International Music, Jazz, Pop, Latin Music
 
  •  Track Listings (9) - Disc #1

During his career, the talented Cuban-born, Florida-based pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba has played with the greatest jazz stars, including Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Lovano, and Charlie Haden. This CD, featuring longtime band mate...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Title: Supernova
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Blue Note Records
Release Date: 7/17/2001
Genres: International Music, Jazz, Pop, Latin Music
Styles: Caribbean & Cuba, Cuba, Latin Jazz, Modern Postbebop, Bebop, Latin Pop
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPCs: 724353117221, 0724353117252, 724353117252

Synopsis

Amazon.com
During his career, the talented Cuban-born, Florida-based pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba has played with the greatest jazz stars, including Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Lovano, and Charlie Haden. This CD, featuring longtime band mate and drummer Ignacio Berroa, bassist Carlos Henriquez, and percussionists Luis and Robert Quintero, highlights his highly evolved take on North American swing, with its dashes of his island homeland's rich Afro-Cuban musical traditions. Rubalcaba's syncopated synthesis of Liszt, Chopin, Wynton Kelly, and the clave swings easily between Cuban and U.S. musical ports-of-call. The leader's two takes of the title composition demonstrate his ease at improvising at top speed in tricky binary and tertiary time signatures. He reincarnates the old Cuban boleros "Alma Mia" into the American ballad form, and he slips John Phillip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" into his grandfather's danzon, "El Cadete." The hit tune "El Manicero (The Peanut Vendor)" is reinvigorated by Berroa's mambo cross-rhythms, Henriquez's Big Apple bass lines, and Rubalcaba's terrific tumbao breakdowns. Gonzalo Rubalcaba plays piano like a drummer and on the synth-laden, drum-featured "Orem (Pray)" he also plays congas, showcasing another aspect of his groundbreaking creativity. --Eugene Holley Jr.

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CD Reviews

Making the Complex Seem Simple
Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 07/18/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)

"A common complaint about contemporary jazz is that, despite its harmonic and rhythmic sophistication, it's often not very listenable. Three recent albums, this one, along with Charlie Haden's Nocture and Michael Brecker's Nearness of You, go a long way toward dispelling that criticism. It's almost as if these artists' albums (and Rubalcaba's handling the piano chair on two out of three of them) are purposely seeking to emotionally connect with listeners without compromising the performers' jazz esthetic. For the most part, each succeds well, with Rubalcaba's working best, Haden's a close second, and Brecker's a fair bit behind. To my ears, the success of Rubalcaba and Haden comes from their amazing assimilation of the slower and more mellow side of Afro-Cuban music. Rubalcaba seems completely at home in this lush atmosphere; remarkably, he manages to evoke its sensuous textures without sinking into sentimentality.Surely to be among many top 10 jazz album list at year's end."
Brilliant
walt | US | 11/05/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)

"(...) How bizarre that (educated listeners) can hear this album and be unaware of it's sheer absolute brilliance. Perhaps (they) couldn't hear hear the perfect sense of time, or the inventive harmonies or the sheer originality of every tune(including The peanut vendor) albeit an old standard but never done better than it is here. To sum up, this album is near perfect and to compare it to Gonzalos' previous releases (as some of the other reviewers have done)is to do it a very unfair and unjustified disservice."
Don't believe everything you read!
68plexi | mill valley, ca | 11/20/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)

"...P>This is an excellent CD by one of the most talented pianists in jazz. Melodic and beautiful but easily complex enough to reward repeated listenings."