Search - Gonzalo Rubalcaba :: Supernova

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.