Search Results for: Trumpet

Meet the Carlos Rodríguez Quintet

Latin America / Venezuela / Caracas

There are many Latin music orchestras worldwide, and our duty is to know and recommend the best orchestras, whether they are known or new talents. On this occasion we had the opportunity to interview Carlos Rodríguez and his orchestra who were playing Jazz, Latin Jazz, Salsa and various mixes of Latin rhythms at the “Café Mi Cosa” located in City Market, Caracas, Venezuela.

At this meeting in the cafe, there was the Carlos Rodríguez Quintet, who make it up: Antonio Davicenzo (Drummer), Darwin Manzi (Trumpet), Pancho Santangelo (Piano), Cesar Bolivar Changu (Percussion) and lastly Carlos himself as soloist.

Carlos mentions that his orchestra has in its themes and/or songs a mixture of Venezuelan music with jazz, Afro-Venezuelan, begin bolero, merengue with a bolerito, among others. Currently for the time they demand the search for new rhythms and stay stuck with the current rhythms, seeking to satisfy and enjoy the public and something that impacts them.

In his first album that was based on Jazz, he made several combinations with various Latin rhythms, such as: Guaguacom, Afro, Bolero, Jazz with Latin rhythm, Jazz with Venezuelan rhythm and other fusions.

It started a long time ago, he tells us that he was with the “National Philharmonic Orchestra”, where he learned and gained experience in the area of music. Of course he not only works with them but with other orchestras and/or artists.

Later he won an international award in Colombia as the best bassist, and his project is to be known as a soloist in his orchestra and not just another accompanist of another orchestra; however, he continues to work with a wide variety of musicians since that is the world of music, living from music not only as his profession but as his greatest passion.

His recommendation for new talents is that there is always a certainty in their musical career, discipline, gain and perseverance to progress and move forward since the road is hard and with obstacles, therefore one should not be discouraged and continue fighting and progressing to so be recognized.

For more information:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carlosrodriguezfalcon6/ @carlosrodriguezfalcon6
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: +58 414-2037324

Gilberto Santa Rosa

Latin America/ Puerto Rico / Puerto Rico

Gilberto Santa Rosa – The Salsa Knight

Gilberto Santa Rosa (Santurce, 1962) Puerto Rican singer. Nicknamed El Caballero de la Salsa, he has been one of the most prominent performers of the genre, particularly since the 1990s. From an early age his love of music manifested itself, which led him to organize his first amateur ensemble.

At only fourteen years old, he already recorded his first songs, thanks to the trumpeter and orchestra director Mario Ortiz. His first group as a professional singer was the Orquesta Grande; Later, as a result of a performance in 1980 in homage to Eddie Palmieri, he joined Tommy Olivencia’s band. Later he sang for a time with Willie Rosario’s orchestra, with which he would record six albums.

Gilberto Santa Rosa

In 1986 he began his solo career at the head of his own orchestra within the Combo Records record company, owned by producer Ralph Cartagena. His first solo album was titled Good Vibrations. This was followed by three more jobs with the same label, which he left in 1990 to sign with CBS Records (later Sony Records).

That same year, Punto de vista was published, a romantic salsa album that went platinum and number one on the Latin charts thanks to its successful songs Vivir sin ella and Perdóname. The album also earned him the award for best Latin singer awarded by Billboard.

In 1991 his album Perspectiva confirmed a brilliant artistic career and opened up new markets for him. In May of this year he made his debut in Spain in a series of concerts in which he shared the stage with Pete Rodríguez, Johnny Pacheco and Roberto Torres, also from the Caribbean, and in September he made an equally successful Central European tour.

Gilberto Santa Rosa singing at the concert

In 1992 he recorded an album in tribute to the singer Tito Rodríguez entitled A dos tiempo de un tiempo. This work was followed by Born Here (1993) and Facing the Wind (1994), which would be his business card in Japan, a country he visited in 1995.

After the publication of Esencia, in 1996, and De corazón, the following year , in 1999 came his successful Expresion, an album that consolidated his position in the international Latin music market and that included hits like Déjate Quiero and especially Que somebody dice me, number one on Billboard for several weeks.

Santa Rosa was one of the first performers to fuse salsa music with classical music, with results such as his well-known work Salsa Sinfónica, which he presented at the Center for Fine Arts on his native island accompanied by the Puerto Rican Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to this historic performance, the concerts given by Santa Rosa at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1995 (which would be included on the live album The Man and His Music) are well remembered; his performance at the I President Festival of Latin Music (Santo Domingo, June 1997); or the presentation at the Lincoln Center in New York with his compatriot Andy Montañez in July 1997.

Also of note are his performances at the Anayansi Theater in Panama in September 1997; at the Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas, in February 1998; the concert at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan; and his 1998 European tour with performances in London, Milan and Rome. Apart from his facet as a singer, he showed his qualities as an actor in the play The Uneven Couple (1990), together with Luis Vigoreaux Jr. and Rafo Muñiz.

Son Cubano is one of the most popular musical styles in Cuba and Kiki Valera is one of its leading exponents

Over the last century, this style of traditional Cuban music has contributed to many other musical genres, including jazz, cha cha cha, mambo, salsa, songo and timba.

Cuban Son is one of the most popular musical styles in Cuba and Kiki Valera is one of its greatest exponents.

Cuban son is the music that made the Buena Vista Social Club worldwide stars in the late 1990s, but Kiki Valera comes from a family of musicians whose involvement with Cuban son predates BVSC by decades.

Kiki Valera is the eldest son of the famous septet La Familia Valera Miranda, a multi-generational traditional music group from Santiago de Cuba.

Since the 19th century, La Familia Valera Miranda has played an important role in Cuban culture by collecting and preserving the deep-rooted traditions of the legendary Sierra Maestra mountain region.

Their debut album, “Antología Integral Del Son”, released in 1982, helped initiate the explosion of interest in traditional Cuban music.

Kiki, like most of her family, is a virtuoso. A multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, sound engineer and producer, he is best known as one of the world’s best players of the Cuban cuatro, a medium-sized guitar with 8 strings grouped in sets of 2.

Kiki Valera is the eldest son of the famous septet La Familia Valera Miranda, a multigenerational group of traditional music from Santiago de Cuba.

Kiki learned the Cuban tres under the guidance of his father Felix as a child.

He later attended one of Cuba’s most prestigious music schools, the Esteban Salas Conservatory, in Santiago de Cuba and by the age of 15 was touring internationally.

Kiki continues to conduct, compose, arrange and perform internationally. She also performs and teaches in Seattle, Washington, where she contributes to the vibrant Pacific Northwest music scene.

His current project features several other internationally renowned artists, including Coco Freeman (former singer for Adalberto Alvarez y su Son and NG La Banda), vocalist Carlos Cascante (three-time Grammy Award winning vocalist for the Spanish Harlem Orchestra), trumpeter Alexis Baró (Cubanismo and Omara Portuondo) and bongocero Pedro Vargas (Barbarito Torres’ band). (Kiki Valera)

“Vacilón Santiaguero” is Kiki Valera’s second solo release in the United States after many distinguished years as the director of La Familia Valera Miranda in Santiago de Cuba.

He goes beyond his core group to present collaborations with some Grammy® award winning musicians and features his favorite trumpet players, some born in Cuba, some born in the U.S., but all with reputations jus????ficadas for playing Cuban music for love, if not DNA.

Son Cubano is one of the most popular musical styles in the world.

“Vacilón” is one of those words that doesn’t have a perfect English equivalent to Cuban Spanish, but something that’s a really good time (a little rum or aguardiente always helps).

So what sets this project apart from the vast mountain of excellent traditional albums already out there? Not only is there Kiki’s custom-made Cuban cuatro, which brings a unique texture to the sound, rather than a tres, but, in his jazz-influenced hands, you’ll occasionally hear twists and turns in his improvisations that you probably weren’t expecting when you first glanced at the song titles, which are mostly Cuban evergreens.

Thanks to Kiki’s creative arrangements, this is no mere recycling of covers of these classic songs.

Kiki is as exacting with the recording, mixing and mastering work as he is with the arrangements.

Much of the recording and mixing was done in Kiki’s custom home studio, and Grammy® winner Michael Lazarus mastered the project.

The result will be an audiophile’s delight, a reason, I might add, to want the physical product for your collection (Kiki Valera).

Kiki Valera – Vacilón Santiaguero (2024).

Tracks:

Este Vacilón (Felix Valera Miranda)
El Ají de Cocina (Felix Valera Miranda)
Sobre una Tumba una Rumba (Ignacio Piñeiro)
El Penquito e’ Coleto (Francisco Repilado “Compay Segundo”)
Funfuñando (Arsenio Rodriguez)
La Guajira (Olga de Blanck)
Mari-Juana (Juana María Casas)
Muñequita Feliz (DR)
El Empanadillero (Teodoro Benemelis)
Pájaro Lindo (Felipe Neri Cabrera)
Dos Gardenias (Isolina Carrillo)
El Cuarto de Tula (Sergio Gonzales Siaba)

Musicians:

Kiki Valera (Cuban cuatro, guitar, bass, harpsichord, maracas and backing vocals).

Pedro Vargas (congas, bongos and backing vocals)

Steve Guasch (Backing vocals)

Carlos Cascante (Lead vocals on tracks #1,#4,#5,#7,#9,#10,#12)

Francisco “Coco” Freeman (Lead vocals on tracks #2,#11)

Joshuah de Jesus (Lead vocal on tracks #3,#8)

Raquel Zozaya (Lead vocals on track #6).

Special guests:

Alexis Baró (Trumpet on tracks #1, #3, #4, #6, #9, #11).

Steve Mostovoy (Trumpet on tracks #1, #3, #3, #6, #11)

Michael Rodríguez & Jonathan Powell (Trumpet on track #8)

Pete Nater & Dennis Hernández (Trumpet on tracks #2, #5, #7, #12)

Brian Lynch & Thomas Marriott (Trumpet on tracks #1#0)

Leon Q Allen (Trumpet on track #4)

https://www.kikivalera.com/

Also Read: Yilian Cañizares, an excellent Cuban musician, studied in her hometown in the strictest tradition of the Russian school of violin

Ezequiel Lino Frías Gómez was an excellent musician, pianist, arranger and composer.

Ezequiel Lino Frías Gómez was born on April 10, 1915 in Havana, Cuba.

Musician, Pianist, Arranger, Composer. He began his artistic career in the early 30’s, working with singer and composer Joseito Fernandez, in the orchestra of Raimundo Pla.

Later he became part of the Fantasía Orchestra.

At the end of the decade he worked with the Septeto Carabina de Ases.

Some time later he joined Arsenio Rodríguez’s Conjunto Todos Estrellas in September 1940, remaining in it until November 1943, leaving his place to Adolfo Oreilly Panacea, to join the Sonora Matancera in 1944, until 1976, where he contributed in an important way both in the composition and musical arrangements, imposing his particular piano solos.

In 1974 he helped found with Armando Sánchez the Conjunto Son de la Loma.

Upon his retirement from La Sonora Matancera, the Puerto Rican producer René López invited Lino, together with Israel “Cachao” López, to revive the descargas he had already recorded in the fifties, assembling a Típica together with “Cachao”.

In his independent years Lino worked with Johnny Pacheco and Carlos “Caito” Diaz.

He accompanied great artists in recordings, in that period in New York, such as La Lupe, Olga Guillot, Daniel Santos, Carmen Delia Dipini, Bobby Capo, among others.

He died on May 22, 1983 in New York, USA.

Lino Frías, who for twenty-two years was the pianist of the Sonora Matancera, composed the very popular Mata Siguaraya in 1951.

One of the most popular photos of the Sonora Matancera.

In it we can see Lino Frías from his piano looking at Celia Cruz, great interpreter of Mata Siguaraya, together with Benny Moré and Oscar D’León.

Ezequiel Lino Frías Gómez was born in Havana and died in New York in 1983.

Lino studied piano at the Havana Conservatory. For a time, in the 1930s, he played in the Raimundo Pia y Rivero Orchestra, whose singer was Joseito Fernandez. He would later play in the Orquesta Fantasía.

In 1939 he joined the Septeto Carabina de Ases, led by Mariano Oxamendi, guitarist and second voice, and with Bienvenido Grande, singer and harpsichord player, Nilo Alfonso, double bass, José Bergerey, maracas and third voice, Ramón Liviano Cisneros, tres player, Florencio Coco Morejón, bongos player, and Félix Chappotín, trumpet player.

In 1944, Lino joined the Sonora Matancera as a pianist, where he remained until 1976.

In the 1960s, Frías joined the movement that created the so-called salsa music, alongside Fania All Stars, Johny Pacheco, Bobby Rodríguez, Carlos Patato Valdés y Caíto, Carlos Manuel Díaz (Matanzas 1905-New York 1990), among others.

Don Adolfo, a Puerto Rican timbalero, worked with Lino Frías in a group that included some of the most renowned musicians and singers of the 1950s and 60s: Olga Guillot, Daniel Santos, Lucecita Benítez, Bobby Capó, Marco Antonio Múñiz, Carmen Delia Depiní, Chucho Avellaneda, Sergio González Siaba and La Lupe, among others.

In 1974, parallel to his work as a pianist in the Sonora Matancera, Lino Frías created the ensemble Son de la Loma, with the participation of Cuban-Niuyorquinos such as Marcelino Guerra, Rapindey (Cienfuegos 1914-Spain 1996), author of Convergencia, and Pedro Rudy Calzado (Santiago de Cuba 1929-New York 2002).

Due to arthritis, in 1976 Lino left the Sonora. His place is taken by Javier Vázquez, (Matanzas 1936), son of the double bass player Pablo Vázquez.

It is said that the death of Lino Frías, in 1983, was a hard blow for his great and faithful friend Celia Cruz (Havana 1925-New Jersey 2003).

In addition to Mata Siguaraya, Lino Frías composed Pan de piquito, Óyela, gózala, Vamos todos de panchanga, Cañonazo, Vive la vida hoy, Suena mi bajo, Convencida, Afecto y cariño, Has vuelto a mí, Baila Yemayá.

Also Read: Israel “Cachao” López Sobrado en fama y respeto en los años setenta se dedicó a mantener la tradición a nivel supremo

Jimmy Bosch. The Creole Trombone of New York.

Norteamerica / USA / Nueva York

Jimmy Bosch was born on October 18, 1959 to a Puerto Rican family in the city of Hoboken in the state of New Jersey.

At the elementary school of his hometown, at the age of eleven Jimmy Bosch was offered a trombone which would give the starting point in his career. According to him, that metallic, valveless, long instrument (which was taller than him) was not necessarily what a child dreamed of; Perhaps, at that time, children dreamed of traveling to the moon, or with an electric guitar that would make them look like The Beatles or, failing that, the Rolling Stones. It didn’t take long for that 11-year-old boy to transform this instrument into an expression of his already visible creativity.

At the age of 13, the talented Jimmy was rehearsing with local bands and making his first foray onto the public stage a year or two later. His determination, the Latin blood that ran through his veins and the taste for the genre that had captivated him on so many occasions, led him to play with the most recognized band in the city: Manny Oquendo & Conjunto Libre. His dexterity and ingenuity in playing “moñas” (a section of trombone solos that enrich the melody) helped him to work with them since 1978, which is why it was alongside the Mythical Free Ensemble that Jimmy experienced the freedom to express himself musically with the trombone

On March 11, 1996, Jimmy Bosch debuted with his band at the internationally known S.O.B.’s nightclub. The result was immediate: Publications in the most prestigious newspapers in the Big Apple such as the “New York Times”, praising his excellence and a house full of loyal fans began to crown the dream of this tropical music worker. In this way he becomes a remarkably respected musician and an icon of Latin culture in New York.

His compositions reflect the creativity and depth of who Jimmy Bosch is. He takes his audience on a journey from Bronx-style “funk” to “hot” guajiras, melodious cha-cha-chás, and clearly poetic lyrics awash with feeling. Thus, Jimmy pays tribute to the other teachers who share their presentations generating remembrance and posterity in each one of them.

In 1998, under the Ryko Latino label, his first solo album, “Soneando trombone”, was released. Jimmy included a “Big Band” with renowned Latin virtuoso artists, such as trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, bassist Andy González, and singers like Jimmy Sabater and Pete “El Conde” Rodríguez. They played a mix of Latin styles, including “hard sauce,” of which Bosch is one of its greatest exponents. Bosch not only played a virtuoso trombone, but was also the musical director on that recording.

With his recording debut as a solo artist, Bosch scored a definite success on the international scene. In Europe critics welcomed his musical creations. And in the United States, newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times were full of praise for their brilliant performances.

At the beginning of 1999, the popular musician returns to the charts with a new production: “Salsa dura“. In this production, including musicians like Steve Turre and Chucho Valdés, it was as diverse, strong, and tough as his first production. The recording also included songs like I’m Still Changing. For the release of “Salsa dura” the Creole trombonist traveled to Europe and performed on countless stages of the Old Continent.

Persevering in his creativity, in 2004 Bosch received new applause in Puerto Rico, presenting his musical proposal at jazz festivals. His bows have accompanied such important figures in the salsa industry around the planet as the aforementioned Free Ensemble of Manny Oquendo and Andy González, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Rubén Blades, India, the Lebron Brothers, La Combinación Perfecta, Cachao, Spanish Harlem Orchestra and Celia Cruz among others. He was the musical director of the outstanding Puerto Rican performer Marc Anthony.

The late creator of the Mambo, Israel “Cachao” López, composed for him the song “Lluvia, viento y caña”. The legendary trombone solo can be heard on the Grammy-winning recording, “Master Sessions Vol. 1” produced by Emilio Estefan and Andy García.

This talented musician stamps his signature with his particular way of playing the trombone, becoming his personal stamp in the music industry. Today, Jimmy Bosch is famous for his explosive solos, full of melody, vibration and funk.

Known by many as “El Trombón Criollo” for the strength of his improvisations, Jimmy radiates his energy to any musical challenge. Jimmy brings us El airplane de la salsa, his latest production, surrounded by high-voltage musicians and soneros.