Cuban guitarist Héctor Quintana presented his album in Havana galaxy animalmade up of instrumental versions of songs by Silvio Rodríguez.
The musician premiered the album in a concert at Casa de las Américas where he confirmed his talent as an instrumentalist and the waste of imagination he had to give a new instrumental life to Silvio’s songs in this album produced by Enrique Caballea.
Carballea, one of the most respected producers on the Cuban music scene, spoke with OnCuba about the birth and completion of the album. “The records are born because the obligation of the soul tells you this is the moment to unite fragments of your previous life with the future and an unthinkable is born. galaxy animal that does not belong to anyone but the God of Encounters”…, he said.
The producer referred to an anecdote that was at the genesis of the recording of this album. “In 1974 or 75, I was in the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Pedagogical Detachment, studying a Bachelor of Education in Geography and was part of a Speleology group… I fell into a cave in Pinar del Río and broke my arm and shoulder… they plastered like a mummy… In those months of pain and discomfort I found out about a concert waiting for Valentine’s Day in the Fine Arts room and with an unusual schedule of 11:00 at night. I went there without thinking, when I arrived there were hundreds of young people trying to enter, but there was no room for so many people… I went around the museum to convince the custodian. When I was on those paths a hand touched my shoulder well and they asked me: What are you doing here? I turned and answered with a single sentence: “I came to hear you.” “Come with me,” was the reply.
“It is clear that it was Silvio Rodríguez and I was on Three Kings Day. He sat me in the front row. I heard the sound check of him next to a majestic man who years later I discovered was Luis Peña the albino whom Pablo El Milanés invited to his wonderful Years. It was the dream concert, the one with the powerful guitar and the powerful verses”.
Carballea then recalled that “a thousand years passed and one day the guitarist Héctor Quintana, whom I deeply admired for his insistence on not letting himself be tempted by nonsense, fashions and sound banality, allowed me to get to know his music first-hand and let his first production label will bear as title a name suggested by my Fingerprint.”
The producer pointed out «this album is released in the best place to release it. The House of the Americas and keep thinking about the things that will come with the compass directed to La Casiopea that Silvio drew for us and Héctor knew how to interpret it for these times, ”he added.
In the concert, Héctor Quintana was accompanied by Oliver Valdés on drums, Yandy Martínez on bass, Yoyi Lagarza on keyboards, and Miguel Ángel García on piano.
Born in 1989 Quintana, in 2011 he won the first prize for interpretation among adults in the Jojazz contest and joined the Jazz Band directed by maestro Joaquín Betancourt, an essential figure in the formation of the new batch of jazz players and musicians on the Island in general. .
