There are concerts that I (and perhaps you?) attend that engage me on one level or on a variety of levels, and I leave the venue feeling somewhere on the spectrum between pleased and appreciative to ecstatic. Then there are concerts that simply make me warm (no make that hot) and sweaty. The Chucho Valdes show at the Centre last night was one of those concerts. From the opening medley of Ellington songs, starting with Satin Doll, treated with a distinctly Cuban flavour to the next song, Weather Report’s Birdland, to the final encore featuring a spirited imitative interchange between Valdes and percussionist Yoraldi Abreu, the rhythmic winds provided by the band combined with Chucho’s unending melodic sense and lyricism engulfed me, from my tapping toes to my bobbing head.
When his sister, Mayra, made her way to the stage for the last two numbers and made an effort to get the audience to clap (she was successful), and sing (Besame Mucho; success again!) and then to get on their feet (again, success!), she did what should have been done from the beginning. She got people to be involved and to move. How could you not have been to that moment? When everybody else settled back into their seats for the encore, this nearly boiling blogger had to move to the side to keep his hyperactive body going.
As I have been saying for years, Chucho Valdes is one of those pianists, perhaps due to his imposing physical stature and massive hands, who doesn’t just play the piano; he devours the keyboard. But as Ray Anderson said so aptly earlier in the day, there are players who have tremendous technique but don’t touch you. Nothing could be farther from the case with Chucho. When he plays, the size of his heart matches that of his hands. While he is capable of playing softly and tenderly on ballads, he never stops swinging. And even when he is “rocking out”, the lushness and emotion in his playing are always there.
His band mates complement him and each other perfectly. Lazaro Rivero Alarcon on bass, while not flashy, is more than solid. The percussion section, Juan Carlos Castro Rojas drums and the aforementioned Abreu, are truly a team. Their interplay with Chucho consistently takes the band to that next level of audience butt moving. They were provided with a few opportunities to solo and generally these took the form of one backing the other and vice versa and all-out percussive assault by the both of them. Rojas exuded such joy throughout the set that you couldn’t help but feel infected by it. And when was the last time you heard so much cowbell from one drummer and kept wanting more? Abreu appears to be a humble young man with immense chops, content to move along the band as a team player, but when given the opportunity to take centre stage as he did with Alcaron on a dual shekere/guiro solo at the end, he shines. I only wish that we could have heard more from Mayra. Not only did she bring energy to the band and to the crowd, but also demonstrated great non-verbal vocalizing ability as well as an ability to get her chops around a tune.
After the show, we went to O'Doul's, where Chucho sat in on three songs.
-Bill
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